5 SEP until 25 OCT 2025

At Potsdamer Straße 77-87 

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present Hans Josephsohn and Günther Förg – A Dialogue at Potsdamer Straße 77-87, Berlin. In this first joint exhibition of the two artists, sculptures by Josephsohn with their tactile surfaces are juxtaposed with Förg’s grid paintings from the 1990s. Reliefs by both artists from different decades are on display on the upper floor of the gallery.  

Hans Josephsohn and Günther Förg came from different generations and only met a few times, but from the late 1990s onwards, Förg was familiar with Josephsohn’s sculptures. Following his usual practice, he studied his fellow artist’s work and was especially fascinated by its materiality. Through Förg’s advocacy, Rudi Fuchs, then director of the Stedelijk Museum, became aware of the sculptor’s work, which led to Josephsohn’s solo exhibition in Amsterdam in 2002. 

In contrast to Förg’s keen interest in his contemporaries, Josephsohn was more solitary in his working habits. His work is characterised by a fascination with mass and forms in space, which he repeatedly recalibrated using specific and recurring shapes over the course of six decades of his career as a sculptor. Since the 1950s, the artist sought to increase the volume of his figures by working with quick-drying plaster, which he had cast in brass or bronze. Traces of his search for the perfect expression of the human body can be seen in the additions and removals of material and in the imprints of his fingers on the finished works. The sculptures are characterised by an urgent physical materiality that combines the immediacy of technique with an aesthetic of timelessness in order to capture ‘réalité vivante’ (living reality). Working from the model, he created individual half-figures, such as the works shown in this exhibition, which were created between 1995 and 2002. Some of them are named, such as Untitled (Lola), 1996, or Untitled (Madeleine), 2000, yet it is only in viewing them that their portraitlike nature can be grasped from the blurring of their forms.

Förg’s interest in Josephsohn’s sculptures related to their materiality, as well as to their uncompromising nature. When he encountered the other artist’s work, he had begun to work on the shimmering grids of the paintings known in literature as ‘grid pictures.’ The proximity between painting and three-dimensionality, which Förg repeatedly explored, becomes apparent in the open, diffused structures of the grids. He was influenced by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and his use of non-figurative elements and colour fields. These works are characterised by the painterly treatment of the canvas, the layered lines of the same colours, and the unorthodox way in which the distinction between negative and positive space threatens to dissolve. The green-black-blue crosshatched Untitled, 1995 weaves vertical and horizontal brushstrokes into a dense pattern, forming an airy whole that appears almost like fabric when viewed from a distance. The large portrait Untitled, 1996, on the other hand, is dominated by impasto ochre grids that seem to block the view of a hidden green background close to the surface of the painting. Förg’s multifaceted approach to art is manifested in the two-dimensional works shown here through subtle allusions to structures and spaces beyond the pictorial plane, thus questioning the boundaries between the artistic disciplines of architecture, painting and sculpture.  

While Josephsohn’s monumental sculptures on the lower floor of the exhibition form ‘the counterweight to our bodies,’ which Förg describes in conversation with Christoph Schenker^[1] as a necessary corporeal counterpart to his painting, relief works by both artists are juxtaposed on the upper floor of the exhibition alongside a large half-figure Untitled (Ruth), 1968, and two grid paintings hanging parenthetically on each end of the room. Concrete reliefs such as Untitled, 1990 by Förg hang alongside bronze reliefs of similar format such as Josephsohn’s Untitled, 1974. Similarities become apparent in the dialogue between the works, in their emphasis on weight and presence. In the interplay of surface and light, the concept of the dialogical exhibition becomes tangible for the viewer.

Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012) lived and worked in Zurich. Solo exhibitions of his works have been held at international institutions, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2024–2025); MASI – Museo d’arte della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (2020–2021); Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2020); ICA Milano (2019); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2013); Lismore Castle Arts (2012); MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2008); Kolumba – Kunstmuseum des Erzbistums Köln (2005); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002), among other major museums. Works by Josephsohn were prominently featured at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). 

Works by Hans Josephsohn can be found in the collections of the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Kolumba – Art Museum of the Archdiocese of Cologne; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Kunstmuseum Appenzell; Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Günther Förg (1952–2013) was born in Füssen and died in Freiburg after living and working in Areuse, Switzerland. His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions at international institutions, including Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris; CAC Málaga (both 2024); Long Museum, Shanghai (2023); Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice (2019); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Dallas Museum of Art (both 2018); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2015); Fundación Luis Seoane, A Coruña; Museum Brandhorst, Munich (both 2014); Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome (2013); Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg (2008); Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (both 1991); and Secession, Vienna (1990), among others.

Works by Günther Förg are included in major public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Broad, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunsthaus Zürich; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; mumok, Vienna; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Saint Louis Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, to name but a few.

[1] G. Förg in conversation with C. Schenker, 1989, quoted in Günther Förg: Trunk Road and Branch Roads, exh. cat., Shanghai: Long Museum, 2023, p. 14.

11 SEP until 1 NOV 2025
Opening – 11 SEP 2025, 6-9 pm

At Bleibtreustraße 45, 10623 Berlin

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present HIGH NOON LUMEN, a series of new paintings by renowned artist Katharina Grosse, marking her fourth show with the gallery. This exhibition follows a remarkable run of acclaimed solo presentations of Grosse’s work in 2025: the Art Basel Messeplatz commission, her largest project to date, which powerfully united structures and objects in a single painted image; the first exhibition of her early sculptural work, at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and her current show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, which envelops the spectator in an expansive painting that embraces the specific architecture of the site. 

Widely known for her spectacular, immersive paintings in which explosive colour is sprayed directly onto buildings, interiors, landscapes and canvas, Grosse paints across different scales, surfaces and dimensions, disrupting our habitual way of ordering the world. Her paintings extend the visceral possibilities of the medium and reflect an ongoing exploration of colour, the body and perception in space. The use of a spray gun allows riotous colour to land clean on the surface and for the artist to scale her reach, responding reflexively to events and ideas that arise as she works. 

For the paintings in this exhibition, Grosse uncharacteristically confined herself to a limited range of colours, using primarily orange and green. There is a particular tension between the two – the feverish intensity of the orange and the antagonistic pull of the dark green, with each disturbing the integrity of the other. 

As Colin Lang writes in the text accompanying the exhibition: ‘When pressed against one another, these two colors have the uncanny effect of lifting the image off the canvas, suggesting a painting that hovers over its support as opposed to being wedded to it. Thus, Grosse seemingly drives a wedge between what appears on the surface of her paintings and the physical support beneath them.’

For Grosse, the canvas is one surface among a near-infinity of possibilities on which the painted image can land. Just as her large-scale in situ works continually test painting’s ‘go-anywhere’ power, appearing on water fountains, sand, grassy verges and glass facades, the unruly paintings on her newest canvases strain to break free.

Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg im Breisgau) lives and works between Berlin and Aotearoa New Zealand. Her recent exhibitions, installations and on-site paintings include CHOIR at Messeplatz, Basel (2025); bLINK at The West Link, Gothenburg (2025); Wunderbild at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2025); The Sprayed Dear at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2025); Shifting the Stars at Centre PompidouMetz (2024–2025); Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions at Kunstmuseum Bonn (2024), Kunstmuseum Bern (2023) and at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2022); Warum Drei Töne Kein Dreieck Bilden at Albertina, Vienna (2023); Canyon (permanent from 2022) and Splinter (2022) both at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Apollo, Apollo at Espace Louis Vuitton, Venice (collateral event of 59th Venice Biennale, 2022); Chill Seeping from the Walls Gets between Us at HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2021); Shutter Splinter at Helsinki Biennial (2021); Is It You? at Baltimore Museum of Art (2020); It Wasn’t Us at Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart–Berlin (2020); the two-person show Mural: Jackson Pollock | Katharina Grosse at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019); chi K11 art space, Guangzhou (2019); The Horse Trotted Another Couple of Meters, Then It Stopped at Carriageworks, Sydney (2018); Wunderbild at National Gallery Prague (2018); Mumbling Mud at chi K11 art museum, Shanghai (2018); Asphalt Air and Hair at ARoS Triennial, Aarhus (2017); This Drove My Mother Up the Wall at South London Gallery (2017); Katharina Grosse at Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2016); Rockaway for MoMA PS1’s Rockaway! programme, Fort Tilden, New York (2016); yes no why later at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); Seven Hours, Eight Rooms, Three Trees at Museum Wiesbaden (2015); Untitled Trumpet for the 56th Venice Biennale (2015); and psychylustro for Mural Arts Program Philadelphia (2014).

Grosse’s works are in the public collections of institutions including Albertina, Vienna; ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen; Baltimore Museum of Art; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Istanbul Modern; K21–Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Kunsthaus Zürich; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Magasin III, Stockholm; MARe–Muzeul de Artă Recentă, Bucharest; MAXXI– Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum Azman, Jakarta; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane; Saarland Museum – Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto; and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, among others.

11 SEP until 29 NOV 2025
Opening – 11 SEP 2025, 6-9 pm

At Goethestraße 2/3, 10623 Berlin

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Grace Weaver at Goethestraße 2/3. This marks the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery, and her first in one of its Berlin galleries. 

In her latest series, Grace Weaver turns to archetypal motifs, including the mother and child and the female nude. For Weaver, the body is not just a subject but a site – a stage on which line is choreographed in lyrical gestures, and through which emotion comes to the fore. Despite their monumental scale, Weaver’s new works disclose humble subjects and tender sentiments.  

Across a series of large square-format canvases, Weaver’s mothers pose in enveloping embraces; swaying, kneeling, or cradling children in their laps. Alongside these, several paintings feature solitary female figures in bowing stances reminiscent of Eve or Aphrodite, attempting to shield their nude bodies from the viewer’s gaze. By contrast, the mother and child paintings propose a triangularity of gazes: at times either mother or child stares outward, at times they remain locked in each other’s stare. Elongated, curving necks recall the postures of Weaver’s Flowers series (2024). As in this earlier body of work, Weaver’s central motif is recognisable, and yet drifts towards abstraction; limbs taper into space, and abbreviated lines merely suggest garments or contours.  Whether in flowers or figures, Weaver’s primary subject seems to be posture itself, used as a means to convey subtleties of mood. 

Weaver paints on the floor, using an all-over fresco-like process. Over a base of black, she applies watery matte washes of paint with over-sized brushes. Working wet-on-wet, the artist paints ‘in the round’, moving around the canvas as though executing a dance of deliberate, curving gestures. The saturated canvas becomes a responsive ground, absorbing each mark and resisting revision. Lines rhyme and harmonise. Surrounding the figure’s arcing outlines, haptic drips from Weaver’s overloaded brush register her movements, bringing the immediacy of drawing into painting. Weaver prepares for each painting in successive ballpoint pen sketches—reducing figures to a few essential lines—so that the final act of painting proceeds in a determined choreography. The painting’s palettes—inky cobalts, pale pastels and papery cream tones—recall the materials of drawing. 

Weaver’s investigation of the mother and child motif began in sketches of a diminutive 6^th century Boeotian terracotta figurine of a mother cradling an infant, inspired by its formal abstraction and emotive reality. As she developed the series, references multiplied, with subsequent works drawing from Cranach’s Madonnas, with their crimped coiffure and rubbery anatomy.  Throughout, Weaver cites poses from Cypriot sandstone figurines, Netherlandish altarpieces, Egyptian statuettes of Isis and Horus, Orthodox Marian icons, and countless ancient Greek ‘kourotrophoi.’ Despite the breadth of influences, in their immediacy, Weaver’s paintings step outside of the specificities of time, space and allegory. Unadorned, and close, they speak not of divine authority but of physical intimacy, vulnerability and a rare looseness of posture and presence.

Grace Weaver (b. 1989, Vermont) lives and works between New York and Berlin. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held in international institutions including Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Neues Museum, Nuremberg (both 2023); Oldenburger Kunstverein; Kunstpalais Erlangen (both 2019); Kunstverein Reutlingen (2017); and Dakshina Chitra, Chennai (2012). Weaver’s work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions including Braunsfelder, Cologne; Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin; Miettinen Collection, Berlin; Neue Galerie, Gladbeck; Villa Merkel, Esslingen (all 2022); Kunstmuseum Ravensburg (2021); Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2018); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (2016); University of Georgia (2015); Burlington City Arts (2013); Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington (2012); Colburn Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington (2011); and Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (2010).