Concrete and Feathers I Soft Archives

In the organizer's words:

Group exhibition for Gallery Weekend Berlin 2026

https://concreteandfeathers.raumklasse-udk.de/

The two-part exhibition project Concrete & Feathers | Soft Archives asks how artistic processes can generate resonance and develop resilience in an increasingly harsh and crisis-ridden world - and how we can experience spaces, matter and life as simultaneously fragile and resilient. The exhibition transforms the raw aesthetics of the site, based on atmospheres of concrete and brutalism and a clear geometry of spaces, into a stage for the fragility of human experience, physicality and emotions. Concrete and its heaviness, a symbol of permanence, urbanity and industry, enter into a dialogical contrast with delicate, flowing, fragile materials that embody lightness, transience and physical and organic presence. In the hardness of the architecture, a strength of softness, immateriality, fluidity and constant change emerges.

In Concrete & Feathers, the students show site-specific, experimental works - spatial and sound installations, sculptural objects and ephemeral gestures. They create a resonating body - a kind of fragile network of relationships in which the perception of physicality, materiality, tactility, immateriality, transitions, collectivity, a sense of security and digital presence merge in a multi-sensory way. The works of Soft Archives in the gallery on the ground floor deal with the theme of memory as an immaterial and fleeting phenomenon. In the form of photographs, film fragments and objects, the students develop archives that give memory a materiality and physicality while remaining 'soft' and open and allowing space for fleeting, constantly changing processes.

The exhibition sees itself as an immersive experience, as a landscape of the in-between that focuses on pausing, conscious movement and one's own sensations - and makes it possible to experience the power of fragility and softness as a resistant resonance of spaces and bodies.

The exhibition project Concrete and Feathers and Soft Archives at Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße is being developed and realized in collaboration with students from the UdK Berlin (Spatial Design and Exhibition Design class, Prof. Gabi Schillig, KM Enzo Zak Lux) as well as students from various universities and studierendenWERK BERLIN (project management Claudia Brieske, curation Isa Zappe). It positions itself as a central location for the student art scene in Berlin for Gallery Weekend 2026.

Artists Concrete and Feathers: Sarra Abid, Malte Andersen, Jonas Altenried, Lukas Barovič, Leo Bauer, Sofia Figueiredo, Liesa Fritzsche, Paulina Graw, Lenni Janner, Lara Jauch, Anna Lenhardt, Laura Lizama Palacios, Karo Ment, Nelly Möller, Maren Oscenda, Junis Poos, Caroline Rentschler, Hana Sakoh, Johannes Scholl, Laetitia Schleking, Juno Smolnik, Hikari Tanaka, Lukas Winter

Artists Soft Archives: Bela Böttcher, Sophia Hallmann, Merle Hermanns, Angelina Kalachenkova, Milena Kwiatkowski & Margaux Vardon, Hanna Laurisch, Paula Schierholt, Ina Schürmann, Sarah Wilhelm, Lorenz Willkomm