Martin Margiela unveils first exhibition in Germany: “Martin Margiela in Berlin” at Konrad Fischer Galerie

BERLIN – Konrad Fischer Galerie opened the exhibition “Martin Margiela in Berlin” on September 11 — as Hypebeast reports, it is the Belgian artist Martin Margiela’s first exhibition in Germany and his first with this gallery. The opening night was held on September 10 (6–10 pm), during Berlin Art Week, while the exhibition stays open until December 19, 2026, at Neue Grünstraße 12, 10179 Berlin.

At the center of the exhibition stands the monumental sculpture “Audience” (2026): 20 seats salvaged from cinemas, their upholstery removed and replaced with cold plaster-and-acrylic forms — an object created for collective viewing that now, as Hypebeast notes, can only be looked at. The seats remain, but the viewer’s body is missing: a familiar Margiela game of presence and absence, turning the audience itself into the object of the gaze.

Alongside it, the artist presents a series of new works created especially for this space: “Hanger I” (2026) — wire hangers bent into the shape of a human bust, “Pallet” (2026), a monumental gate of white wool, boxer briefs pressed into tondo forms, a hair crown with a Fibonacci spiral, as well as the new “Vortex” sculptures made from bathroom tiles. According to the Konrad Fischer gallery, the deliberate intervention in the gallery’s architecture turns it into a labyrinth: wall dividers and heavy steel curtains create isolated zones, where the human form appears suggested by ordinary objects, but never fully present.

The exhibition’s central theme is privacy, intimacy and the relationship between human presence and absence. By transforming everyday objects into sculptures — from cinema seats to bathroom tiles — Margiela continues the aesthetic that made him famous: anonymity, the poetic recycling of the ordinary, and the disappearance of the author himself from the work.

Margiela, once known as the most secretive designer in world fashion, left the fashion world in 2008 and devoted himself fully to art. His debut as an artist was held at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris in 2021, followed by exhibitions in Beijing (2022) and Seoul (2023), while his most recent solo show was at Kudan House in Tokyo in spring 2026. With “Martin Margiela in Berlin”, he now addresses the German public too — with an exhibition in which the viewer is, at once, the protagonist and the one who is missing.