In the exhibition Nervous Dust Martin Maeller examines questions of identity, sensitivity and vulnerability, and addresses the relationship between private and public mourning. He develops his works from personal memories, mythology and pop culture to explore collective experiences of loss, processes of alienation, and the search for belonging.

In his artistic work, Maeller interweaves reality with fiction, revealing not only contradictions, but also blurring notions of social conventions, and at times referring to people who, by virtue of their own identity, see themselves as disconnected from the world. His sculptures function as expressions of queer grief, drawing form and content from nonconforming processes of commemoration. Through the use of organic and industrial materials, and the altering and reinterpreting of everyday objects, he connects things that, at first glance, do not seem to belong together. Maeller’s works appear smooth and reduced; and at the same time, they are also intimate and intuitive: heat-shrinkable rubber tubing is reminiscent of lifeless branches, vessels with figurative elements resemble mummification jars, printed cubes made of acrylic glass evoke reliquaries.

In his exhibition, Maeller gathers ambivalent inner worlds – between melancholy and repression, affection and care – and, in the process, allows new forms of personal experience to emerge. His works seem like fragments of a gloomy world of thought, like poetic set pieces that contrast the physical world. The exhibition Nervous Dust opens up alternative perspectives and puts the focus on topics that exist on the fringes of social discourse.

Martin Maeller (*1990) lives and works in Berlin. In 2016, he graduated from the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. He has participated in numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions, including at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2022); Dům umění, Brno (2021); the Museum for Sepulchral Culture, Kassel (2020); Basis, Frankfurt (2019); and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2018), among others. He was a scholarship recipient of the Tokyo Residency Program of the Mart Stam Society, Berlin in 2019 and of the Alexander Tutsek-Foundation, Munich in 2017.

Curated by Vincent Schier.

We thank our funding partners: