Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk | NEW YORK – BERLIN | Galerie Z22 | 03.07.-31.08.2025

until 31.08. | #4730ARTatBerlin | Galerie Z22 shows from 03. July 2025 the exhibition “NEW YORK – BERLIN” by the artist Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, a flaneur through cultural biotopes, between German neo-expressionism and American pop culture, moved from Cologne to bubbling New York in the mid-1980s after studying art – at a time when the East Village was regarded as the thermal centre of postmodern overheating.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, Du musst dein Leben ändern, 1986, Mixedmedia, 172 x 172, 40 x 30

In this urban hothouse, Schwerin von Krosigk begins to develop his artistic language with gestural painting on precarious picture supports – blinds, cardboard, plexiglass. What initially seems like impetuous improvisation turns out on closer inspection to be an aesthetic experimental arrangement in which pictograms, ornaments, urban found objects and ironically broken symbolisms condense into semiotic processes. In the midst of industrial abundance, the artist pursues an alchemy of the marginal, an alienation of purpose that transposes the overlooked to the meta-level through re-evaluation.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, Times Spquare, 1988, Mixedmedia, 57 x 75

It is no coincidence that we find him in the circle of those icons of American contemporary art – Haring, Basquiat, Warhol – who distil new visual languages from the visually saturated ecology of consumption. Schwerin von Krosigk, also a lecturer at Princeton University and a member of the American Abstract Artists, cultivates a dialectic between lustful expressiveness and philosophical reflection in his works.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, Galerie Z22

His move to Berlin in the 1990s marked a change in tone. What still appeared to be an aesthetic eruption in New York was transformed into a poetic archaeology of the imagination in his most recent works – the so-called “Fictions”.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, Romance, 2016, Mixedmedia

Here we encounter the attempt to bring the discarded skins of civilisation – packaging remnants, transparent plastics, typographic relics – into dialogue with laconic ink drawings. The grand gesture is reduced, the pictorial space condenses into a contemplative chamber. The “fictions” are artefacts of reduction, performative meditations on what remains when everything seems to have been said.

Wilfried Schwerin von Krosigk, Fiktionen, 2025, Mixedmedia auf papier, 40 x 30

Schwerin von Krosigk’s works no longer operate on the stage of the spectacular, but in the zone of the fragile. In his own words, they are “search movements whose meaning is revealed in the unintended – where the surprising and enigmatic can unfold”. This art form manifests a way of thinking that does not instruct, but probes. The artist is not the propagandist of a message, but the architect of provisional spaces of meaning – and perhaps this is precisely the most radical form of expression today.

Opening: Thursday, 03. July 2025, at 7 pm.

Exhibition dates: Thursday, 03. July – Sunday, 31. August 2025