Thomas Schütte

12 JUN until 16 AUG 2025

Following Thomas Schütte’s major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last year and at the Pinault Collection at the Punta della Dogana in Venice in spring 2025, the Konrad Fischer Galerie is now delighted to be showing new works by the Düsseldorf-based artist in Berlin.

In the gallery’s courtyard, visitors are greeted by two large bronze sculptures: an almost fourmetre-high, monumental “Mother Earth” (2024), whose eyes shine onto the gallery building at night, and an unusual animal creature, the “Praying Dog” (2022), whose hands are strictly bound in prayer, and from the inside of which a light also appears at night. While “Mother Earth”, standing upright, finds herself literally constricted in a voluminous cloak, a motif with which we are familiar from Schütte’s “Father State” and the “United Enemies”, the dog torso in its idiosyncratic pose recalls Schütte’s ceramic “dogs” from 2015.

On the ground floor, visitors encounter no less extraordinary creatures, two “gnomes” made of ceramic, one of which appears to have collapsed under the weight of the material. The scenery is overlooked by a ceramic oval of a “Weeping Hero”. In the office is shown a ten-part graphic edition, which takes up the theme of the “dogs” again.

On the first floor, the smaller bronze version of “Mother Earth” is accompanied by a male counterpart in ceramic, the “King” (2025). In addition, the artist presents new irregular ceramic ovals, which in turn take up the dog motif, another “Weeping Hero” and “Flowers” (2025), which Thomas Schütte made in Niels Dietrich’s ceramics studio in Cologne. In the mezzanine, two further ceramics, the “Iroquois Double Heads”, unconventional physiognomies that alternate between human and animal features, are held together by the famous hairstyle of the “Six Nation People”, which later made a career for itself in the punk era. On the opposite side of the mezzanine is presented the ten-part watercolor series “KITSCH AS KITSCH CAN” which, created in one day, shows flowers on an inky black background.

The dark second floor is dominated by two impressive chandeliers, made of steel and decorated with Venetian glass drops, which reach out into the room with their tentacle arms and illuminate it. The first of these “octopus” chandeliers (2025) is exhibited in the Punta della Dogana, overlooking the Venetian lagoon from the Belvedere.

The mezzanine on the second floor concludes the exhibition with Schütte’s new watercolors from 2024, which refer to current global political events with titles such as “NEAR EAST”, “SYRIA” and “ASSAD” and are populated by demons, monsters and sad clowns.