15 FEB until 5 APR 2025
Opening – 15 FEB 2025, 4-7 pm

At Wilhelm Hallen

John M. Armleder’s Furniture Sculptures, an iconic series that has been central to the artist’s practice since the 1970s, takes center stage in the exhibition of the same name at Mehdi Chouakri Wilhelm Hallen. With works from 1984 to 2014, the show highlights Armleder’s ability to blur the lines between fine art, functional objects and design. 

Inspired by the Fluxus movement, this series challenges the convention of treating paintings merely as decorative backdrops for furniture. Armleder incorporates found objects—often curious pieces of furniture from the 1950s and 1960s—which he either combines with paintings created specifically for them or modifies directly. His works reference the aesthetic legacy of avant-garde art and reveal a formal affinity with Constructivism. At the same time, they subtly and ironically question the concepts of art and design by playing with the perception and value of everyday objects. With ostensibly trivial items, Armleder succeeds in unsettling fundamental principles of art reception.

The exhibition opens with AA (Furniture Sculpture), 2004–2008. Here, Armleder deconstructs a 20thcentury design classic: a wall-mounted cabinet by Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto. The cabinet’s bulbous gray door protrudes plastically from the wall. To its left, Armleder places a mirror and a white monochrome painting—both precisely matching the door’s dimensions, creating a formal dialogue between the elements. The mirror not only reflects the surrounding space but also serves as a link to the cabinet’s original function as part of a dressing room. The interplay of surface, depth, and three-dimensional form explores fundamental aspects of spatial perception. Mirrors frequently appear in Armleder’s œuvre, as in the next Furniture Sculpture from 2002, in which he combines two monochrome, perforated panels in muted green tones with a round, illuminated mirror. The perforation of the panels echoes the pattern of the mirror’s metal backing —a found object from Berlin’s Komische Oper from the 1950s. The subtle visual connections between the elements reinforce the composition’s unity and create a play of light and texture. 

The title of UIUEUUE is a compound of the vowels in the words Furniture Sculpture. With this work, Armleder highlights an object that appears to be an incidental find: the fragmented foot of a piece of furniture. Mounted on a cream-coloured MDF panel, the delicate black spiral appears to float in midair. Its eccentric placement creates a subtle sense of disorientation, while the overlapping rings, when viewed from the side, recall the linear constructions of Naum Gabo. In conjunction with the shifting play of shadows, the sculpture unfolds a geometric-mystical presence that changes continuously depending on the light. The 1986 work Untitled (Thunder and Lightning, Furniture Sculpture) combines a tanning lamp with a painting. Armleder employs fluorescent paint that reacts to the lamp’s light, establishing an optical dialogue between the elements. This interplay of light, color, and object introduces an additional layer of perception and underscores Armleder’s playful engagement with material and context. 

MY is a distinctive work within this series, as it does not incorporate a canvas but rather a pendant lamp from the Gaboseries by Japanese artist Mariyo Yagi. Its fine, white threads cascade like the fringes of an Art Deco dress, dividing the space with their delicate transparency. Armleder intervenes subtly in the light bulb’s programming, causing the light to switch on and off at random intervals. This fluctuating rhythm creates a pulsating dynamic reminiscent of the Charleston dance of the 1920s. The lamp thus transforms into a light sculpture that actively interacts with its surroundings. The Furniture Sculpture from 1990 once again consists of found objects—in this case, two ceramic pedestal sinks. These ordinary readymades, usually hidden inconspicuously beneath a washbasin, are highlighted by Armleder as he presents them mounted on the wall. The artist plays with a shift in perspective, allowing viewers to see a familiar object from an unfamiliar vantage point, thereby placing it in a new, estranged context. 

The earliest work in the exhibition, from 1984, brings together three chairs in the style of the 1950s, which may once have stood in a hotel lobby or tearoom. Armleder marks each with a small white dot in different locations and leans them at an angle against the wall. Through this simple yet precise intervention, he plays with balance and gravity, stripping the furniture of its functional purpose and granting it a new sculptural quality—a subtle reference to Constructivism. In Let it ride, Armleder combines two overturned playground slides with a dot painting. While slides are typically associated with childhood, joy, and carefree play, his altered perspective removes them from their original context. Instead, their metallic, reflective surfaces engage in a formal dialogue with the painting, evoking an industrial aesthetic. The title, borrowed from the world of gambling, reinforces the work’s lucid, almost surreal character. 

The exhibition concludes with Life is a Bench, a work that combines a museum bench with a painting precisely tailored to its dimensions. The bench, originally designed by Martin Visser for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, traditionally serves as a place for contemplating artworks. Through Armleder’s intervention, however it becomes an artwork itself, shifting from the realm of functionality to the domain of artistic expression. In doing so, he continues his exploration of the boundaries between art and design.

Armleder’s work have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva (2024), Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2023),  Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2021), MAMCO – Museum für moderne Kunst, Geneva (2020), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2019), MUSEION – Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bolzano (2018), Musée national Fernand Léger, Boit (2014), Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York (2012), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2011), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2011), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008), Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2006), Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2004), MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (1992) and many others. 

15 FEB until 5 APR 2025
Opening – 15 FEB 2025, 4-7 pm
At Wilhelm Hallen

The Archiv Charlotte Posenenske, a dedicated exhibition space at Mehdi Chouakri Wilhelm Hallen, presents the first instalment of a year-long display exploring the lesser-known early works of Charlotte Posenenske. This initial exhibition focuses on works on paper from 1956 to 1959, offering insight into the foundational years of an artist who would later become a key figure in Minimal and Conceptual art.

At first glance, these dynamic compositions—created with a palette knife—appear to contrast sharply with Posenenske’s later industrially produced sculptures. However, they reveal an early preoccupation with structure, rhythm, and process that remained central to her artistic evolution. Strongly influenced by her teacher Willi Baumeister and the École de Paris, Posenenske experimented with gestural abstraction, yet her approach already hinted at a mechanised detachment. Works such as Rasterbild (1956/57) display an almost systematic arrangement of black dots, evoking both the visual language of Mondrian and the perforated surfaces of Lucio Fontana’s Buchi. The speed and precision in her application of paint resonate with the calligraphic dynamism of Abstract Expressionism, while her palette-knife landscapes recall Cézanne’s structural approach to form.

The exhibition Anfänge der Form: Charlotte Posenenske auf Papier underscores the complexity of Posenenske’s early practice, in which the tension between gestural expression and depersonalised mark-making foreshadows her later transition into three-dimensional, participatory work. By revisiting these formative years, the Archiv Charlotte Posenenske encourages a deeper understanding of the artist’s systematic exploration of space—one that would ultimately redefine the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

Charlotte Posenenske (*1930 Wiesbaden †1985 Frankfurt am Main) is considered one of the most important figures of Minimalism in Germany and beyond. Posenenske’s artistic development began with paintings, progressed through sculptural images that increasingly intervened in space, and culminated in her main sculptural work in the 1960s. The spatial sculptures and “revolvingvane” objects, which can be freely assembled from serially produced elements, blot out artistic subjectivity and replace the traditional, autonomous work of art with

industrial artefacts. By detaching them from their everyday function, they become recognisable as aesthetic objects and at the same time undermine the commodity character of art. Posenenske’s works pursue an explicitly democratic claim to art by resorting to low-cost production and creating opportunities for the “consumers” to participate. 

Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions at Haugar Art Museum, Tønsberg (2025), Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare, Bolzano (2021), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2020), Kunstsammlung NRW (2020), DIA Foundation, Beacon (2019), MACBA, Barcelona (2019), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (2019), MUHKA, Antwerp (2015), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (1990), among others.

15 FEB until 12 APR 2025
Opening – 14 FEB 2025, 5-8 pm

At Fasanenplatz

Mathieu Mercier’s solo exhibition 1995, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2022 at Mehdi Chouakri Fasanenplatz brings together works spanning nearly three decades. The presentation offers insight into the artist’s ongoing exploration of the intersections between art, industry, and consumer culture. Influenced by movements such as Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Russian Constructivism, Mercier reinterprets modernist ideals in a contemporary context.

Mercier’s work operates at the confluence of avant-garde ideals and Duchampian strategies, questioning the relationship between utilitarian objects and artistic expression. By appropriating and subtly transforming existing forms, he constructs artworks that exist in a state of perpetual tension—between functionality and abstraction, recognition and ambiguity. Each piece encapsulates unresolved questions, inviting viewers into a space where meaning remains openended. 

A defining characteristic of Mercier’s practice is his ability to reference historical and contemporary visual languages without allowing them to become self-contained. Untitled (2007), a window made entirely of synthetic glass, references the transparency of modernist architecture, as envisioned by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, while also nodding to Marcel

Duchamp’s La Bagarre d’Austerlitz (1921). Yet these references are merely entry points; Mercier’s works do not end in self-referentiality but extend outward, embedding themselves within broader cultural and social contexts. His art reflects the individual’s relationship to a landscape shaped by film, advertising, urban planning, and industrial design.

The Drum and Bass series (2002) exemplifies Mercier’s engagement with the genealogy of consumer products and their avant-garde origins. These series merge contemporary massproduced objects with the aesthetic principles of artists such as Piet Mondrian, tracing a lineage from early 20th-century utopian ideals to today’s hyper-commercialised visual culture. In Mercier’s hands, these elements do not remain mere symbols of their historical predecessors but are instead recombined, revealing the ways in which art and life have become intertwined—and, at times, estranged—under the influence of industrial production and market forces.

By assembling standardised consumer products into compositions that echo the language of abstraction, Mercier collapses the boundaries between production and consumption. His work reflects a world in which capitalism is less concerned with creating from raw materials than with repurposing and recontextualising what already exists. As Vincent Pécoil observes, Mercier unites the questions “What is to be done?” and “What to choose?” within a single object—an echo of contemporary conditions in which the logic of assembly and recombination has overtaken traditional notions of artistic creation.

Presenting a range of mediums, including sculpture, painting, and photography, 1995, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2022 reflects the essence of Mathieu Mercier’s practice—a continuous negotiation between art history and mass culture, the readymade and the handmade, past aspirations and present realities. The exhibition also includes a more conceptual approach with the reactivation of Hygiaphone (1995), a work that fills a room through emptiness—holes in the wall taking a specific shape—exemplifying Mercier’s DYE protocolar method.

Mathieu Mercier (*1970, France) received the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2003. His works have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Musée des arts et métiers, Paris (2019), Le Portique – Espace d’art contemporain, Le Havre (2018), Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine (2012), Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2008), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2007),  FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou (2006), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2003) and many others.