The Power of Small Things
With works by Shahin Afrassiabi, Matthias Dornfeld, Gotscha Gosalishvili, Klara Hobza, Melissa Joseph, Talisa Lallai, Yi Ten Lai, Dirk Lange, Milad Nemati, Paloma Proudfoot, Benja Sachau, Camilla Steinum, Henning Strassburger, Reinhard Voigt, Grace Weaver, Caroline Wong, Rachel Youn

14 NOV 2025 until 17 JAN 2026

It is often in the smallest gestures that perception shifts – a trace of movement, a concentrated image, a moment held long enough to change how we see. The Power of Small Things begins from this space of heightened attention. The exhibition considers the small not as a matter of scale alone, but as a force that shapes meaning through focus, proximity and duration.

The small has long held cultural and emotional significance. In her study The Small Stuff of Roman Antiquity (2024), classicist Emily Gowers describes the small as a “site of attention,”¹ where perception deepens and intimacy is formed. Walter Benjamin referred to the miniature as “not the opposite of the monumental but its innermost crystallisation point”² – suggesting that the small does not reduce significance, but concentrates it into a more incisive form.

In this exhibition, the small appears as a moment of intensity: a gesture that focuses attention, a fragment that contains a larger narrative, or an image in which time and memory are compressed. The works do not assert their presence through scale or spectacle. Instead, they build meaning through precision, resonance and attentiveness. The small is understood here as a method of thinking – a way for art to generate significance through concentration rather than expansion.

Marking fifteen years of the gallery’s work, The Power of Small Things reflects a curatorial ethos shaped by sustained attention, long-term dialogue and trust in processes that unfold quietly over time. The gallery has developed in spaces that enable intimacy, through conversations that evolve gradually and through artistic practices that gain strength through continuity rather than immediacy. Much of what defines the gallery’s identity has emerged in concentrated form – through recurring gestures, committed collaborations and works that reveal their impact over time.

In this sense, The Power of Small Things is not presented as a retrospective, but as a condensation of an ongoing practice. The exhibition can be read as a living index: a network of traces in which each work forms a distinct layer of thought, time and relation. Together, the works explore how meaning emerges in the small – with clarity, subtlety and lasting resonance.