Pack den Badeanzug ein – Groupshow

Few songs have managed to capture the lightheartedness and exuberance of summer in the way that the German hit song “Pack die Badehose ein” (“Pack Your Swimsuit”) did in the early 1950s. The teen star Conny sings about the small burdens of everyday life, which can be removed simply by jumping into the cold water of the Wannsee lake.

We are pleased to present the exhibition Pack den Badeanzug ein, a refreshing look at both emerging and established positions in contemporary painting. Featuring a broad selection of artistic methods, the exhibition explores what painting can be in the 21st century. What is the state of art’s oldest medium in today’s hyper-digitized world? What can the analogue image do that the digital cannot, and how do the two media influence each other?

Christian Perdix (born 1987, Berlin, DE) explores how our online behavior affects life beyond the web. In the hybrid space of his images, fantasy and reality sit side by side, often forming a dangerous liaison.

Kat Lyons (born 1991, Louisville, US) addresses the effects of media omnipresence. Her metaphor-rich paintings examine the desire to please others and society’s often insoluble demands on womanhood in the 21st century. Gender equality remains a utopia, and inequality between women and men persists. Women appear as animals in her work, evoking the feeling of being show horses in a circus of vanities. Lyons proposes a way out—rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Identifying the problem becomes the first step toward a solution, deconstructing fixed behavioral patterns.

Similar surrealistic moments define the works of Alicia Adamerovich (born 1989, New York, US), Stefanie Gutheil(born 1980, Ravensburg, DE), and Tamara Kvesitadze (born 1968, Tbilisi, GE). Through abstraction, they dismantle established gender roles to create a theoretical blank canvas for reflection and discussion. Kvesitadze presents her figures stripped and vulnerable; Adamerovich merges women with surrounding objects as they sink into couches; Gutheil’s balloon-like female breasts recall cartoon objects rather than anatomical forms.

Monica Kim Garza (born 1988, New Mexico, US) invites viewers on an imaginary journey to the beach on a hot summer’s day. Confident and carefree, her sunbathers celebrate idleness amid cold drinks, sun lotion, and cool water, appearing both detached from the world and fully at peace with themselves.

In Carlo D’Anselmi’s (born 1991, New York, US) paintings, water becomes a stage for drama—a place to plunge, float, or turn inward. Quiet gestures such as reaching hands and averted gazes reveal the fragility of interpersonal relationships. Whether the figures seek salvation or experience pain remains open.

Kimia Ferdowsi Kline (born 1984, Tennessee, US) creates compositions reminiscent of snapshots from long-forgotten summer holidays. Faces and surroundings are rendered schematically, mirroring fragmentary memory. Looking at these images months later, one almost feels sand in one’s shoes and a breeze on the skin.

A similar effect characterizes the drawings of Ella Kruglyanskaya (born 1978, Riga, LV). With precise, minimalist lines, she captures the opulence of summer. Her focus on sunbathing women evokes memories of overcrowded swimming pools—we can almost smell sunscreen and hear children shouting at the diving board.

The visualization of sound also appears in the works of American artist Erik Hanson (born 1969, Tokyo, JP). Over recent years, he has repeatedly explored the character Bluto, Popeye’s nemesis. A stereotypical “bad boy,” Bluto embodies traditional masculinity. Hanson’s repeated engagement with this figure becomes a meditation on inherited gender roles.

The men in Logan T. Sibrel’s (born 1986, New York, US) works appear equally meditative. Combining personal experience with internet imagery, his compositions explore nostalgia and the longing for people or places—reminding us of quiet moments by the pool as the sun sets and summer slowly fades.

Before that moment arrives, however, one garment often takes center stage: the swimsuit. More than almost any other item of clothing, it embodies the promise of summer while also functioning as a political symbol—revealing the zeitgeist and expressing women’s emancipation.

Clemencia Labin (born 1946, Maracaibo, VE) also focuses on swimsuits, transforming them into organic-looking sculptures in her series PULPA. Their delicate colors and textures evoke tropical ice cream parlors, promising pleasure, warmth, optimism, vitality, and strength.

Finally, German artist Elvira Bach (born 1951, Neuenhain, DE) has celebrated bathing women in her colorful works since the 1970s. With expressive brushwork, she depicts emancipated, self-confident women. Pride, grace, and the knowledge of a secret unite her figures: when only a small piece of fabric lies between sky and skin, what matters is not a straight posture, but a strong position.