HUMAN TETRIS

HUMAN TETRIS Hans Bellmer, Mariechen Danz, Sabrina Fritsch Sep 20 - Nov 2, 2025 Hans Bellmer (*1902 in Katowice, †1975 in Paris) was a photographer, sculptor, painter, illustrator, and author. In his highly controversial artistic work, he obsessively focused on depicting the human body and viewing it from a fetishistic, sadomasochistic, and voyeuristic perspective. In protest against the National Socialists‘ seizure of power, the trained typographer and illustrator decided to give up all work that was useful to society in 1933. He closed his studio for commercial art and began constructing his first doll. Defamed by the Nazis as a “degenerate artist,” Hans Bellmer emigrated to Paris in 1938, where he was enthusiastically received by the Parisian Surrealists. In 1953, he met the writer and poet Unica Zürn, with whom he lived and worked closely until her death. Hans Bellmer‘s work has been shown in numerous renowned museums and galleries, including the documenta Kassel, the Whitechapel Gallery London, the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, MoMA New York, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, and the Centre National d‘Art Contemporain Paris. Mariechen Danz´s (*1980 in Dublin) work takes communication and the transmission of knowledge as its starting point, placing the body at the center of her practice. In sculptures, drawings, costumes and installations she combines scientific systems for appropriating and describing the world with subjective, alternative and magical thinking. Mariechen Danz further activates her installations through staged vocal performances. The human body functions as the primary place of investigation for her work - the body as a metaphor, as origin and remains. Mariechen Danz studied at the Universität der Künste, Berlin, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and received her Masters in Art & Integrated Media from Calarts, California Institute of the Arts, in 2008. Her work has been featured in institutions such as 16th Istanbul Biennial, 57th La Biennale di Venezia, Haus der Kunst Munich, MAK Vienna, Centre Pompidou Paris, Kunsthaus Bregenz, High Line New York, New Museum New York and the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin. Sabrina Fritsch (*1979 in Neunkirchen/Saar) has created a complex, constantly evolving artistic universe in the medium of painting, which confidently reconciles painterly control with the renunciation of it. She explores the relationship between images and space as well as the relationship between images and their carriers. Her visual worlds usually arise from playful and analytical experiments with materials and the formal conditions of painting and can be conceived both figuratively and abstractly, whereby they always seem to be fed from an inner reservoir of motifs. Her works are represented in numerous institutional collections, including the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Folkwang Museum Essen, the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, and the Kunsthaus Nordrhein-Westfalen Aachen. Sabrina Fritsch is a professor of painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. The exhibition is kindly supported by Kunststiftung NRW