Berlin Art Week 2026 unfolded across the German capital from September 9–13, marking the festival’s 15th anniversary with 125 participating institutions, galleries, collections and project spaces, and more than 300 events. Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey, Artmag followed a critical route through the week, focusing on exhibitions and artistic positions that stood out for their engagement with landscape, artificial intelligence, memory, migration and the body.

For those who follow contemporary art year-round, Berlin Art Week matters less as a festival spectacle than as a concentrated moment in which galleries and institutions reveal some of their strongest curatorial positions of the season.

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On Landscape at Haus am Lützowplatz: Between Escapism and Disenchantment

Thus, the venue Haus am Lützowplatz organized a tour with curators and artists to immerse the viewer in the context of the new exhibition “On Landscape: Zwischen Eskapismus und Entzauberung”. Thematic exhibitions that gather different artists around a single idea always evoke a special response in me. When a collective reflection on a pressing topic forms the foundation of an exposition, contact with the viewer occurs instantaneously. We read the underlying thought from various angles – through the painting and sculpture of guides endowed with their own unique backgrounds.

The exposition is structured upon a subtle spatial and conceptual contrast. Entering the hall, the viewer finds themselves in a tense dialogue between two opposing walls: facing each other directly here are Hiroyuki Masuyama’s idealized past landscape and Beate Gütschow’s harsh ecological reality.

On one side is Masuyama’s large-format panorama: a severe high-mountain landscape in muted shades of gray, blue, and earth, devoid of the slightest trace of humanity. The light and atmosphere of the canvas fluctuate between dry documentary precision and romantic grandeur. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that we are looking at a digital reconstruction of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “High Mountains (Swiss Landscape)” (1824), which burned in 1945 in a Berlin Zoo flak tower and survived only in historical black-and-white photographs. Masuyama weaves these archival shots with thousands of his own photographs taken at the very same Alpine site, creating a work on the boundary between document, replica, and digital phantom. This is an investigation into the fragility of cultural heritage, where original and copy, memory and media illusion merge into one.

Yet one only has to turn 180 degrees – and the academic idyll crumbles. On the opposite wall hang photographs by Beate Gütschow titled “Resistance, Flood, Fire, Resistance. Chapters 15, 28, and 39.” Since 2020, the artist has combined her art practice with climate activism, documenting German landscapes affected by disasters. In this series, capturing burned-out forests near Treuenbrietzen southwest of Berlin, Gütschow records the landscape not as a frozen dramatic episode, but as an extended, painful process.

Finding oneself between these two works, the viewer physically feels the gap between the reconstructed memory of lost art and the irreversible shift of nature – a process unfolding right before our eyes that leaves no way back.

In the lens of my camera, these two works met purely intuitively: Sven Dröll’s 3D sculpture aligned precisely against the backdrop of Philipp Fürhofer’s painting. The resulting frame feels like a single, indivisible statement – that the contemporary mountain landscape has definitively lost its status as “wild nature,” transforming into a complex technological and cultural construct deformed by human presence.

In his work “Survival”, Fürhofer overlays scraps of advertising slogans and media phantoms – “forever”, “natural”, “hot” – directly onto the eroding flesh of Alpine rocks. Consumer noise, digital debris, and ecological vulnerability grow into the mountain relief itself, displacing romantic contemplation.

Meanwhile, Dröll’s sculpture “Ismark” picks up this conversation in the language of pure code: translating precise geodata into a 3D-printed object and artificially stretching the peaks along the Z-axis, the artist turns monumental peaks into abstract digital silhouettes. Together in a single photograph, they clearly prove: landscape today is a hybrid of algorithms, geographical data, and cultural stereotypes.

Yet this algorithmic curtain exists not only in the space of conceptual objects – it is firmly embedded within the very optics of our daily perception. Today, nature hardly reaches us without intermediaries: we look at it through the prism of screens, matrices, and digital interfaces.

In Michelle Jezierski’s work “Level”, this media filter finds an exceedingly precise painterly embodiment. Behind a strict, regular grid of square cells, reminiscent of a digital display surface or a graphic editor panel, a mountain landscape only vaguely emerges – a hazy, shimmering panorama of pink, violet, and brown tones. In places, the squares break out of the structure and illuminate with celestial hues, blinking like activated pixels in an algorithmic system.

The data grid draped over the landscape inevitably covers the human being as well: today, it is not only nature that is read as pixels and code elements, but we ourselves. The theme of blurring individuality, compaction of the environment, and overpopulation is explored by Alkan Avcıoğlu in his series “Overcrowded Symphonies”, created with the help of artificial intelligence.

In his monumental panoramas, gigantic human crowds condense into tiny dots, turning the physical density of the city into an allegory of information noise and the endless pressure of the digital environment. The individual definitively loses agency here, dissolving in the mass as a quantum of data or an element of an algorithm. Yet through this dense chaos, Avcıoğlu searches for his “symphony” – a fragile possibility of new harmony and rhythm sprouting within an oversaturated world.

However, it is not only the digital matrix that acts as a curtain between us and the natural world. Our own cultural myths, nostalgia, and romantic stereotypes filter our perception just as much. Friedrich Kunath masterfully explores the artificiality of the traditional landscape idyll and the tragicomic longing for it.

In his monumental triptych “I’m Fine Too”, he weaves the traditions of German Romanticism with the biting irony of American pop culture. A four-meter panorama of a calm sea with a setting coral sun and a lonely drifting buoy transforms into a space of inner psychological resonance. The phrase inscribed across the water sounds like a vulnerable, touching self-defense, while the canvas’s visible seams, cuts, and painted-over fragments expose the artist’s central thought: the image of pristine nature is merely a thin illusion tailored from clichés, through which existential anxiety and the awareness of loss inevitably bleed.

Yet if in Kunath’s work nature becomes a nostalgic phantom exposing cultural loss, Simone Haack returns us to it through a tangible, almost hypnotic corporeality.

Before her canvas, one’s gaze halts of its own accord. Light breaks through as if from the very depth of the canvas – is it dawn or a fading sunset? And this familiar forest landscape… wait: these are not roots entwining the earth, but cascading falls of hair, through which, as if from the depth of the soil, human figures sprout.

The artist builds her “Secret Forest” (La Forêt secrète) upon an exquisite optical illusion and bodily phenomenology, transforming the traditional landscape into a pulsating ecosystem. Landscape in Haack’s work loses its status as external scenery: it acquires a tangible pulse and turns into a single hybrid matter, where plant cover and living flesh grow through one another.

In this dreamlike reality, hair becomes the primary visual and conceptual medium – a unifying bio-code that instantly erases the hierarchy between human, beast, and plant. Recognizable canons of femininity and intricate hairstyles – down to the long strands of Erling Haaland – intertw here with the aesthetics of wild nature: thick lion manes, the fur of Afghan hounds, and flowing horse tails. Botanical forms grow into that same corporeal fabric: silver threads of Spanish moss, coastal algae, and viscous rhizomes.

The magic of this “living matter” itself is born from a distinct painterly gesture: the artist literally “combs” the oil layer with delicate long-bristle brushes, applying paint in continuous, fluid lines. In the case of Simone Haack, jewelry-like control over the material and a masterful fluidity of the brushstroke yield a rare sensation that the canvas is not merely painted in oil, but woven from the very fabric of life.

A special value was lent to this meeting by the fact that the curatorial tour was led personally by Dr. Mark Wellmann, and the opportunity to see the artists, hear them firsthand, and engage in live dialogue rendered this experience truly rare.

During the tour, a question arose acutely that currently preoccupies the art community: we live in an era when the legal and ethical framework of artificial intelligence is only just forming. Intellectual property, the lawfulness of data usage, the boundaries of authorship – all these topics hang in the air. Legislation lags behind, yet simultaneously a concern emerges: will rigid regulatory norms tie the hands of an already fragile art industry?

These questions extend far beyond a single exhibition. In Alchemy of Code: AI as an Exoskeleton of Creative Imagination, Artmag examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping authorship, creative agency, and the relationship between artist and machine.

The work of the art collective Troika (founded in 2003 by Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer, and Sebastjan Noel) integrates seamlessly into this context. Based in London, the artists have long explored the interconnections among nature, machines, and knowledge systems. In their new project, they address the paradoxes of generative intelligence: the film itself was created using AI systems, so technology acts here simultaneously as both the subject of study and the tool of production.

The machine “dreams” of nature, generating almost hyperrealistic, polished panoramas – the very familiar digital wallpapers and screensavers that have shaped our collective concept of “ideal wild nature.” But gradually this flawless visual facade collapses: floods, droughts, and burning glaciers engulf the screen.

Thus arises the central paradox: AI depicts an ecological catastrophe, yet itself relies on a colossal energetic and material infrastructure built on the very logic of ruthless resource exploitation. As the climate crisis escalates, can we carelessly resort to the services of “all-powerful” algorithmic assistants, knowing that server farms drain rivers, alter landscapes, and destroy the planet’s ecosystems?

These questions remain open, but keeping silent about them is no longer an option. We ourselves shape the world in which we wish to live, and what it becomes depends on our awareness. And what decision do you make for yourself?

Jonas Hödicke at Galerie Mond: Escape Velocity

Continuing our route through Berlin Art Week, we turned toward Charlottenburg and stepped into Galerie Mond. Among the multitude of exhibition events in this rich art season, attention was immediately captured by works in which one simultaneously feels the energy of movement and a strange fragility. Thus we became acquainted with the work of Berlin artist Jonas Hödicke and his exhibition Escape Velocity.

Hödicke was born in Berlin in 1984 and studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Markus Lüpertz and Siegfried Anzinger. Today he lives and works in Berlin and Ireland. His practice encompasses sculpture, painting, and drawing, with the human being at the center of his interest – the body, movement, and interaction with space.

Particularly expressive are his sculptures made of wire and steel. The line in Hödicke’s work gradually transforms into a human figure, yet never entirely loses the sensation of a drawing. Plenty of air remains between the metallic elements, making the heavy material unexpectedly seem almost weightless. The figure seems to freeze for a fraction of a second between movement and stillness. It is precisely this tension between weight and lightness, resistance and movement that becomes one of the key characteristics of his work.

The title Escape Velocity references physics: it is the minimum speed required for an object to permanently leave a gravitational field. In the context of the exhibition, the formula turns into a metaphor for an attempt to step outside a familiar trajectory. What holds us in a certain orbit – physics, memory, the city, our own body? And what impulse is necessary to finally change direction?

Strawalde at Galerie Michael Haas: Painting Between Gesture and Memory

Next was the exhibition Strawalde – Parade at Galerie Michael Haas. Strawalde is the pseudonym of the German artist and director Jürgen Böttcher, who was born in 1931 and lives in Berlin; his painting in the GDR was considered “formalist,” as a result of which he was excluded from the Artists’ Union and for a long time could practically not exhibit.

The central aspect of his work is the very matter of painting. Böttcher works with dense, multilayered, impasto brushstrokes, over which free, almost calligraphic lines emerge. Figures do not always appear as distinct images: they are rather guessed at among gestures and color spots, transitioning from abstraction to figurativism and surreal imagery. As a result, the paintings appear highly spontaneous, yet behind this immediacy lies a long, refined painterly gesture.

His painting is difficult to assign to a single movement: abstraction, expressive gesture, figurativism, and poetic surrealism coexist simultaneously. An important role is also played by memory, personal impressions, and observations of the surrounding world – that which the artist seems to reassemble in the painting through line, color, and texture.

The exhibition Parade runs at Galerie Michael Haas from September 10 to October 23, 2026, and is part of the Berlin Art Week program.

Not All Travellers Walk Roads at HKW: Humanity as Practice

Another scale-defining and lively project we saw at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). In the rich context of the art week, the HKW project performs a critically vital function: it restores to art its emancipatory and investigative power. Showing works by artists from the Global South and diasporic communities, the exhibition “Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice”, directed by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, demonstrates that a polyphonic approach to curation is the only way to make sense of today’s complex, fragmented world.

HKW fundamentally rejects the cold “white cube” format. The exhibition is constructed as a dynamic biotope, where the exposition is continuously activated through soundscapes, performances, and oral histories. Special thanks go to the curators for the wonderful design. The departure from white walls in favor of rich color instantly enlivens perception and causes the imagination to work anew.

Sound works here as an ideal transit medium without visas or borders, while oral memory is passed from mouth to mouth, transforming the viewer from a detached observer into a co-traveller. The primary feature of the space is its immersive, tangible architectonics, seemingly inviting one to traverse a complex route on one’s own feet.

Exhibition Routes: From Ocean Surface to Ritual Fire

Movement through the exhibition is structured as a sequential immersion into layers of collective memory and the physical experience of wandering.

The viewer begins their journey by stepping onto a vivid blue floor symbolizing ocean pathways and transit waters. Suspended above this imaginary depth of water hover large-scale, hand-woven structures made of natural and dyed threads. Reminiscent simultaneously of cocoons, fishing nets, and traditional hammocks, they embody the idea of a portable home – the sole refuge where a wanderer can find sleep, heal wounds, and preserve memory.

Further on, the space shifts scale. Monumental canvases of thick, textured paper descend from the ceiling. The blue-gray pigments applied to them align into fractal patterns resembling traces of natural erosion, wind, or sea salt – a visual allegory of how the journey itself leaves indelible imprints on the body and memory of the traveller. We often call nature the “greatest artist”; it is wondrous to observe how humans attempt to replicate this unique handwriting of nature.

Opposite, against a backdrop of a deep terracotta wall, hangs a dense salon-style display of monochrome graphic works. Dynamic ink loops, arcs, and signs form a visual poem – a calligraphy of motion seeking to record the trajectory of human destinies.

Right nearby rises a semi-transparent cylindrical curtain of textile painted with rich red-orange tropical blossoms. It breathes and invites one to peer inside. This floating structure creates a soft boundary – a special protective “microclimate” inside the vast hall. The installation unveils the theme of botanical memory and cultural transfer: plants act not merely as a decorative motif, but as silent witnesses to migration. Moving across the world, people bring their native flora with them, planting it in a new location and recreating their accustomed habitat right amidst an alien space.

Yet the climax of this route is the transition into a darkened hall bathed in a deep, hypnotic red light. Into this atmosphere, one can submerge entirely.

At the very heart of the space lies a ritual hearth: a circle of charred wooden stumps, charcoal, and smoke rising above the ground. This is not merely an installation, but the most ancient archetype of the hearth. The red spectrum deprives the viewer of familiar reference points, leaving them face-to-face with a feeling of primal assembly. The hearth across all cultures is the point where stories are told around the fire, experience is passed on, and a sense of community is found. Even when a home is completely destroyed or lost, it is precisely the fire and the willingness to gather around it that give human beings the strength to move forward.

Humanity as Process, Not Condition

The main thesis to which this entire visual and sensory experience leads is embedded in the title of the project itself: humanity is not a static status or a given, but a constant, daily practice (humanity as practice). It is built through the capacity to share space, hear another’s pain, offer hospitality, and acknowledge the Other’s right to their own non-linear route. This is an exhibition-reminder that amidst endless physical and mental borders, our shared resilience depends on a readiness to practice humanity time and again – step by step, regardless of whether there is a paved road beneath our feet.