Berlin · 11/09/2026
Sabine Moritz: ROT GELB BLAU STAUB
Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin presents ROT GELB BLAU STAUB, a solo exhibition by Sabine Moritz and her first with the gallery. Moritz brings together twelve large-format canvases arranged in four groups of three, her first quadriptych in oil, and a still life. On the upper floor, a selection of works on paper offers insight into the breadth of her practice over the past thirty years. Moving freely between abstraction and figuration, Moritz paints and draws on canvas and paper, at large and small scale – in pared-down tones in her early work and in increasingly vivid colour in later years. Although her works may at first seem disparate, they reward a slow and intimate way of looking. In these moments of pause, recurring motifs, figures and forms quietly rise to the surface. Echoing one another like fragments of memory, the works begin to inform each other in subtle and surprising ways. Throughout her career Moritz has pursued a sustained investigation into the complexities of the human condition. Drawing on history, mythology and poetry, she weaves elements of personal memory together with collective experience. In her early practice – represented here by the works on paper – she built her compositions mainly from photographs and newspaper cuttings. Over the last decade, however, abstraction has come to dominate her painting, which she develops intuitively and without preparatory sketches. For her twelve new paintings, Moritz took loose inspiration from the four classical elements: fire, air, earth and water. Working in four groups of three, she imbues each canvas with something of the essence of these primordial substances – in title, in palette and in character. Licks of paint flicker like flames, dissolve into vaporous whorls, take on an earthy heaviness or swill in liquid pools. Since 2023 Moritz has been introducing bodily forms into some of her compositions, probing the boundary between the abstract and the figurative. In her new monumental quadriptych, female bodies emerge as if by alchemy from gestural sweeps and strokes of paint. Slipping in and out of focus, their contours softly dissolve, ebbing and flowing between pigment and form. Guided by instinct, Moritz paints freely and spontaneously, and her figures call to mind the canon of art history – from Titian to Picasso – as much as raw emotion, feeling and mood. The exhibition title, which translates as 'RED YELLOW BLUE DUST', captures the aesthetic and conceptual dialogue between colour and matter at the core of Moritz's work. In her paintings, dense passages built largely from primary colours seem to drift upwards, as though passing from one elemental state into another. In the three Luft (Air) paintings, light-filled daubs of sky blue and rose-petal pink are set against verdant greens and yellows. In the Feuer (Fire) works, a deep red smoulders at the heart of each canvas. And from the jewel-like, dappled ground of Teach us to number our days II, three skulls materialise as an enduring memento mori. Upstairs, the works on paper present the figurative imagery and associations that defined Moritz's early practice: helicopters, ships and apartment blocks; single flowers wilting or blossoming on the stem; the solitary figure of a child. These references stem from her childhood memories of growing up in the GDR, as well as from art-historical, social and political iconography and recurring symbols of transience. They lend her drawings the elusive quality of a dream. Drawn into the artist's world, viewers are invited to linger and to weave their own narratives from these fleeting fragments of form. Sabine Moritz was born in 1969 in Quedlinburg, Germany, and lives and works in Cologne. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Le Château – Centre for Contemporary Art and Heritage in Aubenas and the Olivia Foundation in Mexico City (both 2025), Kunsthalle Rostock (2019), Kunstverein Bremerhaven (2017) and the Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle in Wuppertal-Barmen (2014). Her works belong to the collections of The Broad, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; FAMM – Female Artists of the Mougins Museum; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; Olivia Foundation, Mexico City; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; and Tate, London, among others. A solo exhibition of her work will be presented at the Garden Museum in London from 8 October to 20 December 2026.
