Contemporary Fine Arts is pleased to collaborate with the ACT Art Collection on this special exhibition by Katja Strunz.
Siggi Loch presents Aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn, a solo exhibition by German artist Katja Strunz, opening during Berlin Art Week 2026 at his private gallery in Grunewald. Set within the Oskar Kaufmann-designed villa, it brings together paintings and works on paper alongside sculptures. It marks the first occasion on which an artist has been asked to develop a comprehensive project in the residence, making this intimate setting accessible to the public.
The house contains Loch’s distinguished postwar and contemporary collection while also hosting concerts for small audiences. Founder of ACT Music and one of Germany’s legendary record producers, he has supported creative culture for decades. His acquisitions began in the 1970s and have followed an instinctive path, sparked by meetings with figures he felt captured the zeitgeist. A longstanding friendship with Strunz grew from this same spirit of curiosity and trust. Several pieces by her are already part of his holdings, among them a special commission.
That dialogue extends to the label. Across almost 1,000 ACT releases over the past 35 years, covers have often drawn on the collection, linking visual art and sound. Strunz’s renowned pulp paintings have appeared on a number of these albums. Here, visitors can encounter the originals at full scale, some of which were used for recordings by Johanna Summer, whose practice moves between jazz and classical traditions. On Sunday 13 September, Summer will perform inside the show, carrying the exchange into a live situation.
The title is a proverb translating as “Out of sight, out of mind.” The phrase describes a familiar condition: what leaves the field of vision can quickly disappear from attention. For Strunz, it serves as a lens through which to consider today’s accelerated temporality, where novelty constantly displaces what came before. Her approach examines how this speed affects our surroundings. As duration intensifies, volume contracts or folds inward, producing what she calls a “post-traumatic compression of space and time.”
More recently, that logic begins to reverse. She speaks of unfolding, letting something emerge. Faced with a darker reality, the possibility of projecting future visions acquires urgency without ignoring existing gravity. Are We Enfolding or Going to Unfold (2022), a large powder-coated steel construction, gives this tension physical shape. Its geometry carries a sense of motion while asking whether a structure closes in on itself or leaves room for others. Expansion becomes an active proposition, an invitation for events to occur.
Music has informed her sensibility since childhood. She sang ecclesiastical repertoire in choirs, listening to voices reverberate through church architecture and feeling connected with earlier generations. Piano training later guided her understanding of abstraction and composition while studying fine arts. That discipline remains visible in a precise method where addition and subtraction are carefully calibrated to reach equilibrium.
Shift (2012) takes these concerns elsewhere. The collage uses a black-and-white reproduction of The Last Judgment, attributed to Flemish painter Hans Memling and dated between 1467 and 1471. Focusing on Eve, Strunz translates the biblical expulsion into an emotional terrain defined by fear and the trauma of falling. A canonical image is recast through her own language, rendering inherited history unstable yet newly immediate.
Throughout the exhibition, what has passed is never treated as safely behind us. Strunz asks where it goes and what is lost when consciousness is fixed on the next step. She proposes presence as a skill, establishing a more attentive relation to memory while leaving what may come open. The visitor is ultimately invited to slow perception, linger with each form and notice what might otherwise vanish.
Text by Nicolas Vamvouklis
