1 MAY until 1 AUG 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

Thomas Demand is known for his photographs of meticulous paper models that reconstruct scenes charged with historical, political and cultural significance, as well as everyday moments. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Demand. In 2025, he began working with a new technique, creating smaller-scale images printed on copper. The material has deep roots in art history: during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was favoured as a painting support by artists including Jan Brueghel the Elder, Adam Elsheimer, David Teniers the Younger, and Nicolas Poussin. Its smooth surface made it suited to fine detail, and its durability helped it resist some of the deterioration associated with canvas or wood. In the nineteenth century, copper served as the support for the daguerreotype, the earliest commercially successful photographic process, in which light acted on a silver-coated plate to produce an image. It is, then, a material that engages with the histories of both painting and photography.

The first of these new images, Klee (2025), shows a close-up of a patch of clover, where the occasional four-leafed variant—a symbol of luck—can be found among the cutout plants. In Schilf (2025), Demand has carefully reproduced a wetland scene, including the layered depth, tonal variation and organic forms of reeds. The seemingly reflective surface below, which suggests the soft distortion of frozen water, is made entirely of paper, heightening the work’s visual ambiguity. Paperstars (2025) depicts white stars decorating a perforated acoustic ceiling of the kind found in public buildings, signalling a celebration. All three draw on a visual vocabulary so ubiquitous that viewers inevitably bring their own associations and memories to them. Money (2025) is based on a still from the bizarre AI-generated video Donald Trump posted in early 2025, representing his “Gaza Riviera” plan. In it, a character resembling billionaire Elon Musk flings banknotes into the air against a sunset-lit sky, an image Demand distils and rebuilds by hand, collapsing digital artifice back into physical material.

Two large-scale UV prints on Perspex are also on view in the exhibition. Melonen (2025) derives from a press image documenting confiscated contraband—fake melons containing methamphetamine—seized at the US-Mexico border. In an entirely different context, the watermelon was simultaneously circulating as a symbol of solidarity with Palestine. The photo also reminded Demand of Henri Matisse’s The Moroccans (1915–16), and as these layered associations suggest, the meaning of images can evolve, and multiply, over time. Eis (2025) demonstrates this equally well. The photograph depicts the terrain of an iceberg in Greenland with intensely patterned crevasses, imagery that today evokes climate change and glacial ablation. The Arctic, once portrayed through photography as a harsh and hostile environment, has been reframed as a romantic symbol of a vanishing landscape under threat.

Through such constructed worlds, the artist interrogates the paradoxes of perception, probing how we read our surroundings, how we remember them, and the ways we are influenced and manipulated by what we think we see. Whether capturing nature’s chance arrangements or AI’s dystopian visions, Demand’s work deftly navigates the space between sculpture and photography, illusion and image, and reality and interpretation.

Thomas Demand (*1964, Munich) lives and works in Berlin. Rooms That Dream of the Past, a solo exhibition of new Model Studies by Demand, will be exhibited at MAK, Vienna (May 27, 2026–January 24, 2027). Also in Vienna,  Passant parmi les Pierres, a group exhibition curated by Demand, will open at fjk3 – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst and run from May 29 to September 13, 2026. He is the subject of a major touring retrospective, The Stutter of History, which opens at Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, on August 21, 2026, having previously been exhibited at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2025), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2024), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2023), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2023–24), and UCCA Edge, Shanghai (2022). Other selected solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2022), Centro Botín, Santander, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (both 2021), Fondazione Prada, Venice (2017, 2007), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2016), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2012), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2009), Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2008), Serpentine Gallery, London (2006), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2003), and Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2002). He represented Germany at the 26th São Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 2004.

1 MAY until 1 AUG 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

The work of Robert Elfgen explores the relationship between humankind and nature through a distinctly mythical, poetic lens. His assemblages, collages, light objects, and floor- and wall pieces are often arranged in room-filling installations that resemble walk-in paintings. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Sprüth Magers is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new and recent works by Elfgen.

Contrast serves as a foundational principle in Elfgen’s practice, with industrial landscapes displayed alongside vistas of nature, images of animals, and magical creatures. His new sandblasted glass panes embody this range, from filigree organic motifs to simple geometrical shapes that coalesce into industrial structures. Set within wooden frames the artist built himself, these sculptural pieces divide the exhibition space while simultaneously connecting it—window and obstruction at once; their transparency allows sight lines to pass through the barriers they establish. Nearby, a discarded and tipped-over barrel spills glossy colour across the floor.

For Elfgen, materials shape and direct the imagery that emerges. His use of wood in his paintings exemplifies this approach: he layers wood stain, ink, and sparkling spray onto wooden supports, then sands them back in certain areas. The wood grain’s natural pattern becomes integral to the image, transformed into atmospheric elements such as overcast skies or fog drifting across a landscape. The visible grain lends the paintings a tactile quality, while Elfgen’s controlled use of colour and light imbues his subjects with an unexpected, subtle romanticism.

Together, these works invite viewers to navigate an artistic universe shaped by material properties and unexpected subjects in equal measure. Rooted in personal experience and everyday observation, the imagery remains attuned to the mythic resonances that emerge from ordinary things.

Robert Elfgen (*1972, Wesseling, Germany) lives and works in Cologne and Brittany, France. From 1997 to 2001, Elfgen studied under John M. Armleder at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). Elfgen studied under Rosemarie Trockel at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2001, becoming her Meisterschüler in 2004. He received a grant from Kölnischer Kunstverein and Imhoff-Stiftung, Cologne (2004), the Förderpreis des Landes NRW für junge Künstlerinnen und Künstler (2007), and the Grafikpreis des Landes NRW (2009). Selected solo exhibitions include Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (2025), PIBI Gallery, Seoul (2022 with An Gyungsu), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2021), Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, Germany (2016), Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg, Germany (2015), Sprüth Magers, Cologne (2008), westlondonprojects, London (2006), and Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2005). Selected group exhibitions include Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany (2025), Villa Stuck, Munich (2017), me Collectors Room Berlin / Stiftung Olbricht (2014), Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe, and Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg (both 2007–08).

1 MAY until 3 MAY 2026
Opening – 1 MAY 2026, 6-9 pm

Martine Syms is one of the defining voices of her generation. She is an artist and director whose practice spans cinema, art, and theatre. On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Sprüth Magers is pleased to present Dominica Publishing, a temporary boutique.

The idea of the shop, desire as performance, and the performance of desire have long occupied Syms’ practice. This thread traces back to Golden Age, a Chicago bookshop and project space she ran for five years, platforming international artists, including Jon Rafman‘s first solo exhibition. This impulse found expression in her 2024 exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, a multimedia project that functioned simultaneously as artwork and concept store. Dominica Publishing began as an imprint dedicated to exploring Blackness “as a topic, reference, marker, and audience in visual culture”, which remains central to her ongoing inquiry.

Presented in the Window, the gallery’s street-facing exhibition space, Dominica Publishing brings together artwork, merchandise—including new designs—and a selection of Syms’ publications. All available for purchase.

Martine Syms (*1988, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2026, Syms will have solo shows of her work at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Past solo exhibitions include Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2024), Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain, Nimes (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2022), Philadelphia Museum of Art (2022), Fridericianum, Kassel (2021), Secession, Vienna (2019), and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017). Group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2025), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2025, 2019), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2021), Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2020), and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018).

Syms’ work has been recognised through multiple awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), Herb Alpert Award (2022), Creative Capital Award (2021), United States Artists Fellowship (2020) and Future Fields Art Prize (2020).