Gerold Miller
20 Mar. – 02 May 2026
This exhibition has grown out of something that is particularly close to our hearts: great art, friendship, a sense of community, and a vibrant, tightly-knit art scene here in Düsseldorf. It is the personal connections, the shared journeys, the conversations, the studios right next door—and, not least, the mutual respect—that have made this collaboration possible. Almost as if by itself, the desire grew to present something together, to engage in dialogue with one another, and to make this connection visible.
Bringing together a dual exhibition of these two artists—who are friends yet very different—is both a joy and a challenge. Together, they engage with the image of the woman—in art history, the press, fashion photography, as a body as well as a mental and emotional construct, in beauty and turmoil. At the heart of Sebastian Riemer’s work lies an engagement with photographic image archives and, time and again, the question of the means, effects, and conditions of photographic images since the invention of photography. Riemer questions the medium’s supposed objectivity, longevity, and documentary power, continually developing new visual forms to do so.
In the entrance hall, we encounter large-format works from *The End of the 20th Century*. On display are works of art documented for museum archives in the form of old, pasted-over, and annotated slides, from which Riemer creates oversized object photographs. Every trace of time, every scratch, every mark becomes visible. Riemer understands his works as “simultaneously a homage to and a devaluation of the source objects” and describes himself as a “chronicler of the work of waste.”
The following works are from the Press Paintings series, which explores the retouching of American press photographs from the 1950s. The works raise questions about the visibility, selection, and exclusion of images—and about the mechanisms of image editing, which continue to function in similar ways today. For news coverage at the time, photographs were heavily edited and manipulated. By enlarging the blackand- white print templates, Riemer brings precisely these interventions into focus and asks: What is deemed worthy of being shown—and what disappears from the image?
On view in the Separée is a new work that explores the dissolution and erasure of images. For this piece, Riemer chemically treated original prints by F. C. Gundlach and then rephotographed them. In the finished images, only outlines and shadows remain visible—in a sense, the essence of the original photograph. The devaluation, revaluation, and transformation of photography are directly intertwined here.
In contrast, Katja Tönnissen’s works, displayed throughout the gallery, engage us with a humorous, direct, and at the same time very physical visual language. In her work, playful lightness is combined with seriousness and a keen curiosity about materials and possibilities.
For example, lampshades become canvases on which the interplay of colors simulates natural shifts in light and mood. Other works address questions of humanity, cultural history, and societal images. Ceramic objects initially elude clear interpretation and only reveal themselves at second glance as body parts or genitalia. In this way, Tönnissen responds to normative discourses on beauty and reclaims the authority to interpret the female body.
She reduces symbols of femininity, longing, and physicality to clear, almost iconic forms. Her works navigate the space between abstraction and bodily memory, posing questions about space and material: When does an object become a body, and when does a body become a form? The result is deliberately exaggerated, pop-art-inspired images that oscillate between irony and seriousness.
Despite this immediacy, her works are based on elaborate traditional techniques such as ceramics and bronze. The result is precisely crafted sculptures with a strong presence that remain both open and ambiguous. Katja Tönnissen develops an independent, consistent, and physically tangible artistic stance from the material itself.
Navigating the terrain between personal connection, a photographic search for traces, and sculptural directness, Here, There, Once And For All opens a dialogue about memory, visibility, the body, and projection—and about the question of how images arise, change, and continue to resonate within us.
Miller continually explores the conditions of each individual artwork—the conditions of its creation as well as the conditions of its contextualization in the exhibition space, in publications, in the artist’s own texts, and on the internet. For Miller, each of these formats—including his own website and an Instagram account—is not merely an image or a narrative thread, but a test, a game, a round. Time and again, combinations and sequences are compared, shifted, tested, and new constellations created. Much like in a card game, the elements are limited; it is precisely this concentration and regulation that give rise to extensive possibilities for development and differentiation. It is these shifting and repetitive movements, steps, and processes within the various groups of works that ultimately lead to perfection while achieving maximum effectiveness—this is Gerold Miller’s method: continuous training. To describe Miller’s style as a minimalist formal language is misleading. He develops his work from a radical, conceptual, and elegant foundation, allowing himself moments of intuition. If one traces the evolution of the resulting works, one can see, within the framework of self-imposed principles, their great diversity and remarkable openness.
Based on a text by Frank Boehm
Installation views photo J. Bendzulla
GEROLD MILLER | GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
