Felipe Romero Beltrán | Dialect | KLEMM’S | 28.02.-12.04.2025

The exhibition Dialect is the first solo exhibition of the Colombian artist Felipe Romero Beltrán at KLEMM’S Gallery. On display are selected works from his photo series Dialect (2020-2023) and the video work Recital (2020).

Beltrán experiments with a visual understanding similar to documentary photography, an anticipation that quickly dissolves in the irritating artificiality of the scenes. The images bear witness to the photographer’s sensitive empathy, yet simultaneously reveal his distinct artistic style. His extremely precise compositions succeed in posing questions about identity, power dynamics, and social structures, while at the same time creating a completely new imagery that resists clear typological classification. Beltrán’s images achieve a dual impact, in which their visual potency supercedes their narrative power. His work fosters a subtle yet profound reflection on migration not only as a geographical phenomenon but also as a bureaucratic, social, and emotional experience.

Felipe Romero Beltrán Dialect, 2022, Pigment Print, 50 x 40 cm, courtesy of the artist and HATCH

After presentations at the Biennale für Aktuelle Fotografie Mannheim/Heidelberg (2022), at the Festival of Young European Photography, Paris (2023), as well as impressive solos at Hatch Paris, and most recently FOAM Amsterdam, Dialect is the young artist’s first exhibition in our gallery and promises to be a highlight of this year’s European Month of Photography Berlin.

This month two more shows display Felipe’s brilliant work. His project Bravo received the KBr Photo Award by the Fundación Mapfre in 2023 which will be shown at the KBr Photography Center in Barcelona until May 18. Last week the group show STATES OF REBIRTH – Körperbilder in Bewegung opened at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg which features selected works by Felipe Romero Beltrán, on display until August 25. On the occasion of the opening days of the European Month of Photography, Felipe will be in conversation with curator Nadine Isabelle Henrich this Saturday, March 1 from 4-5:30 pm at Akademie der Künste on the topic of A Time in Between: Photographic Practices and Experiences of Displacement.

About Felipe Romero Beltrán
Born in Bogotá in 1992 and now based in Paris, Felipe Romero Beltrán explores the liminal realities of migrants in his multimedia, long-term project. In a specifically developed setting for the gallery space Beltrán juxtaposes his photographic works with a three-channel video projection, where documentation and staging merges into an ambiguous yet powerful narrative about waiting, companionship, and the conditions of migration, both in bureaucratic and linguistic aspects.