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until 07.11. | #5164ARTatBerlin | Galerie Friese presents from Friday, 11. September 2026 (Vernissage: 10.09.) the exhibition URFORM by the artist Claire de Santa Coloma.
As part of Berlin Art Week 2026, Galerie Friese is presenting Claire de Santa Coloma’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. In the exhibition ‘Urform’, the Argentine sculptor is showcasing an installation of her wooden sculptures that spans several rooms.
Claire de Santa Colomas (born in Buenos Aires in 1983) focuses her practice on materiality, space and perception. Her starting point is a piece of wood she has found, which she works on by hand with as little intervention as possible. Each piece tells a story about its origins and the relationship between humans and their environment.
De Santa Coloma’s sculptures are reminiscent of stones smoothed by water, of organs or eggs – archaic ‘primordial forms’, so familiar as if they had always been there. Forms that seem to predate humankind and yet require it in order to come into being. At the same time, they stand in the tradition of Classical Modernism, in particular Brâncuși’s iconic abstract formal language, to whose pioneering, spatially expansive compositions Claire de Santa Coloma also draws in her installations.
‘Urform’ brings together the sculptures as a site-specific, tactile installation. The plinths – designed specifically for the exhibition and reminiscent of workbenches – lead visitors through the gallery spaces. Walking, touching, thinking – the works engage the whole body, not just the gaze. The forms are in a state of constant transformation; they are related to one another yet never identical. A process without a destination, driven by the necessity of the act of making itself – the ever-renewed attempt to approach that one form. The installation reflects the artistic decisions and questions that guide the creative process: it reveals the threshold between natural form and abstraction, between object and sculpture.
Vernissage: Thursday , 10. September 2026, 6 – 10 pm
Introduction: Klaus Gerrit Friese, at 7:30 pm
Exhibition period: Friday, 11. September – Saturday, 7. November 2026
Special opening hours for Berlin Art Week:
Wednesday, 09. September, noon – 6 pm
Thursday, 10. September, noon – 10 pm
Friday – Sunday, 11 – 13 September 2026, noon – 6 pm
Title image caption: Skulpturen von Claire de Santa Coloma im Atelier, Buenos Aires, 2026
Exhibition Claire de Santa Coloma – Galerie Friese | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
