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until 07.02. | #4868ARTatBerlin | Galerie Martin Mertens shows from Friday, 21. November 2025 the exhibition „Colourful Abstraction“ by the artists Thorbjørn Bechmann, Antje Blumenstein, Katrin Bremermann, Joanna Buchowska, Martin Bünger and Matthias Kanter.
At the end of the year, the Galerie Martin Mertens is presenting a group exhibition that brings together artists exploring the theme of color and abstraction. The artistic materials and forms of expression are incredibly diverse.
The Danish painter Thorbjørn Bechmann‘s work explores the tension between chance and control. His pieces emerge from the interplay of freely moving paint, which makes its way across the canvas, and the artist’s constant, intuitive interventions. Bechmann creates soft gradients that resemble delicate veils of color. Through the process of layering many colors, he creates surfaces rich in tension. The large-format works possess an impressive luminosity and evoke shimmering, harmonious plays of light.
In recent years, color, light, and spatiality have become central aspects of Antje Blumenstein‘s work. The Berlin-based artist frequently uses unusual materials such as neon tubes or fluorescent acrylic sheets, which she uses to create fascinating geometric color spaces through layering and/or milling lines. These spaces, through their interplay of transparency and density, generate an intensely colorful interplay of surface and space. The color itself is given a three-dimensional form. These works encourage the viewer to constantly move and shift their perspective.
For the Berlin artist Katrin Bremermann, the free play with geometric forms and the exploration of positive and negative shapes, as well as the weighting of surfaces and lines on the paper or canvas, is always a central aspect. Her paintings are usually dominated by a strong primary color and often resemble ciphers or symbols, blueprints, or patterns.
Joanna Buchowska‘s colorful and extremely (literally) multi-layered works are created from papers and clippings from magazines or newspapers. In this process, representational elements can flow into the image, losing their original motif and assuming a completely different function within the collaged network of images. Recently, spatiality and representational elements in his visual worlds have repeatedly receded into the background in favor of a freer, abstract composition.
Martin Bünger‘s painting moves between intuition and composition, between spontaneous gesture and precise construction. His works unfold a quiet intensity that captivates the viewer less through narrative motifs than through the immediate presence of color, surface, and rhythm. In his abstract works, painting becomes a process of searching and creation—each layer responds to the previous one, each density to a pause.
In his exploration of the history of painting, Matthias Kanter focuses on color as a carrier of meaning and as a space-creating element within the pictorial space. The exploration of subtle color harmonies and the conveyance of emotions solely through color has become his central theme. His works require an emotional openness on the part of the viewer and a precise sensing of the individual color soloists, which only together create a concert.
Opening: Friday, 21. November 2025, 6–9 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 21. November – Saturday, 7. February 2026
Winter break: 21. December 2025 – 06. January 2026
To the gallery
Title image caption: Thorbjorn Bechmann, 2024, oT-2233, 91 x 141 cm, courtesy of Galerie Martin Mertens
Exhibition Colourful Abstraction – Galerie Martin Mertens | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
