Berlin · 10/09/2026
Martin Margiela in Berlin
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Konrad Fischer Galerie presents Martin Margiela in Berlin – the artist's first exhibition with the gallery and his first ever in Germany. Since stepping away from the fashion world in 2008 to dedicate himself entirely to art, Martin Margiela has pursued an inquiry centred on human physiology, on materiality and on the transformation of everyday objects and materials. For the presentation on the gallery's first floor, two walls have been constructed beneath the mezzanine, while opaque painter's sheeting hangs around the entrance and from the deliberately raised balustrade. Together these interventions block sightlines across the room, shielding the works and the visitors from one another as they move through the space. The gallery is divided into a sequence of partitioned zones, producing an atmosphere of intimacy and privacy that in turn sets up an interplay between human presence and absence – themes that lie at the heart of the artist's concerns. At the centre of the exhibition stands the monolithic sculpture Audience (2026), a monumental wall of reclaimed cinema seats stacked one upon another. Each seat has been stripped of its original upholstery and given a new surface cast in plaster and acrylic. Other works take up further familiar, everyday objects that have been manipulated, painted over, defaced or distorted: coat hangers, bathroom and kitchen tiles, magazines, underwear, furniture and carpet. At irregular intervals the exhibition is punctuated by images of human heads, hair and faces that seem, at first encounter, both familiar and foreign, hovering between the recognisable and the strange. In these works, tactile and physical interventions are bound up, often with humour, with Margiela's ongoing interest in the body, in its relationship to the environments it inhabits and to the things it uses: where we sit, what we wear, what we read, what we watch and what we touch. Margiela's debut solo exhibition as an artist was held at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris in 2021, and subsequently travelled to the M Woods Foundation in Beijing (2022) and the Lotte Museum in Seoul (2023). More recently he has presented a solo exhibition at Kudan House in Tokyo (2026). His work has also featured in group exhibitions including L'Homme qui Marche at Kunsthalle Bielefeld in 2019–2020 and No Angels at Wilhelm Hallen in Berlin in 2023. In 2024 a newly commissioned sculpture, Blinds, was permanently installed in the centre of Antwerp as part of Kunst in de Stad. Margiela works in Belgium and lives between Belgium and France.
