Matthias Dornfeld • September • Berlin Art Week • 11.09.–01.11.2025
We’re excited to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Matthias Dornfeld, titled September, at Soy Capitán during Berlin Art Week 2025.
Matthias Dornfeld
September
Opening: Thursday, September 11, 6-10 pm
Our special opening hours during BERLIN ART WEEK:
Thursday, September 11, 11 am – 6 pm (Preview)
Thursday, September 11, 6 pm – 10 pm (Opening & Gallery Night)
Friday, September 12, 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday, September 13, 11 am – 6 pm
Sunday, September 14, 12 – 6 pm
Dornfeld’s painting inhabits a space in which reality and its representation do not coincide. His portraits, still lifes, figurative and abstract compositions recall classical motifs, yet they appear as though they have undergone a long journey through distortion, displacement, and alienation. Lines are crooked, forms seem awkward, colors emerge in unexpected combinations — a palette that is often surreal, sometimes contradictory, and in its directness undermines any illusionistic intention.
Dornfeld’s practice can be understood as a process of conscious unlearning. Instead of following the rules, he works his way away from the academic tradition of painting in order to open the space for spontaneous decisions. The canvas thereby becomes a site of negotiation between the knowledge of painterly possibilities and the will to question them again and again. The result is a pictorial world that reads like a swan song to perfection and provokes the idea that painting must correspond to ideals.
At the same time, his works can be located within a long tradition of modernism. The naive, disorderly mode of depiction refers to the avant-garde of the twentieth century, which rejected perspective and realistic modelling in order to explore the immediate perception of the world. This movement once caused upheaval in society and the art world, an upheaval whose characteristics linger in Dornfeld’s works today. The figures appear deliberately imperfect, the lines falter, the color planes seem to dance. Nevertheless, no chaos arises, but rather a coherent, vivid pictorial world that invites the viewer to engage with the felt reality of the artist.
September reveals a dialogue between past and present. The tradition of the avant-garde, its experimental and playful spirit converges with a confident mastery of the medium. In each work, it becomes clear that Dornfeld is not simply painting, but developing a personal visual logic: a world in which form, color, and line interact according to their own rules. What ultimately remains is less a definitive interpretation than the experience of encountering a painting that invents its own principles.
Born in 1960 in Esslingen, Matthias Dornfeld studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he later returned as a guest professor.
Since 2001, his artwork has been exhibited internationally. Solo shows include Danke Esslingen at Villa Merkel (2023), L’Amour Change Tout at Oldenburger Kunstverein (2022), Crème brûlée at Soy Capitán, Berlin (2020) and Paintings Sweet Paintings at Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2014). Selected group exhibitions feature What’s The Story? at KMSKA Antwerp (2024), Ungekämmte Bilder at Pinakothek der Moderne Munich (2023) and Just in case you have forgotten at Krinzinger Projekte (2020).
