On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Konrad Fischer Galerie is pleased to present Martin Margiela in Berlin, the artist's first exhibition both with the gallery, and in Germany.
Having stepped away from the fashion world in 2008 to devote himself fully to his practice as an artist, Martin Margiela has continued to pursue an artistic inquiry centered on human physiology, materiality, and the transformation of everyday objects and materials.
For his exhibition on the first floor, two walls have been built beneath the mezzanine, while opaque painter's sheeting hangs around both the entryway and from the deliberately raised balustrade. Together, these interventions obstruct views across the room, shielding both the works and visitors from one another as they move through the space. The gallery is thereby divided into a series of partitioned zones, creating an atmosphere of intimacy and privacy, which in turn generates an interplay of human presence and absence - themes central to the artist's concerns.
At the centre of the exhibition stands the monolithic sculpture Audience (2026). Comprising reclaimed cinema seating stacked into a monumental wall, each seat has had its original upholstery removed and replaced with a plaster and acrylic cast.
Other works comprise further familiar everyday objects that have been manipulated, painted on, defaced or distorted: coat hangers, bathroom and kitchen tiles, magazines, underwear, furniture, carpet. The exhibition is punctuated at odd intervals with images of human heads, hair and peoples' faces that, on first encounter, feel both familiar and unfamiliar, hovering between the recognizable and the strange.
Here, tactile and physical intervention humorously entwine with Margiela's ongoing interest in the body, its relationship to the environments it inhabits, and the things it uses: where we sit, what we wear, what we read, what we watch, and what we touch.
Margiela's debut solo art exhibition was held at Lafayette Anticipations Foundation in Paris in 2021, from where it traveled to Beijing (M Woods Foundation, 2022) and Seoul (Lotte Museum, 2023). Recent solo exhibitions include Martin Margiela at Kudan House, Tokyo, 2026. Margiela's works have also been included in the group exhibitions L'Homme qui Marche at Bielefeld's Kunsthalle in 2019-2020 and No Angels at Berlin's Wilhelm Hallen in 2023. In 2024, a newly commissioned sculpture titled Blinds was permanently installed in the center of Antwerp as part of Kunst in de Stad.
Margiela works in Belgium and lives between Belgium and France.