With Future Collapses, Past Rises, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) presents a new exhibition by Katja Strunz that brings together numerous approaches and techniques from the artist’s practice. The exhibition features lacquered steel sculptures referencing principles of folding and collapsing, alongside origami-like collages based on high-resolution satellite imagery showing the transformation of the Earth’s surface by human impact. Both groups of works bear witness to a balance between becoming and passing away. By highlighting the multitude of perspectives generated through the artistic process of deliberately folding material, they emphasize the potentiality of constant change. The selected works are supplemented by found objects and new contemporary historical references. The n.b.k. Showroom becomes a place where different pasts arise and enter into new relationships with a continually collapsing future.

In her series In Formation (2025), the artist works for the first time with satellite images from the analysis company Planet Labs PBC, founded by NASA scientists, which continuously documents the Earth’s surface at a data acquisition rate of over 30 terabytes per day. Strunz folds and collages a selection of these photographs, redefining the boundaries of the depicted landscapes in ever-new constellations and allowing them to encounter one another in structures that are as crystalline as they are corporeal. In the exhibition at n.b.k., these are accompanied by numerous other collage works using hand-scooped and hand-dyed paper – the Pulp Paintings – which illustrate the breadth of Strunz’s work with the medium of paper collage.

Metal sculptures are positioned as counterpoints to the wall works. These are also based on the principle of folding and, with their multitude of possible viewing angles, further emphasize the temporality of every spatial experience. Central to the dynamics expressed in Katja Strunz’s works is a sequentiality without a fixed order: the folding in, folding over, and re-folding embodied by the works represents a non-linear temporal order that produces ever-new connections. Continuities are suspended by moments of compression, fragmentation, or collapse; the idea of a final, ideal form is called into question and replaced by a constant process of breaking in, around, and open.

Katja Strunz (*1970 in Ottweiler / Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She is known for her sculptures, wall works, large-scale installations, and works on paper, in which she explores the interaction of time and space. While still a student, she gained recognition for precise interventions in existing architecture. Since the early 2000s, she has continually advanced her exploration of the philosophical and physical principles of space-time, developing an abstract formal language realized across a diverse range of materials. Her work has been presented at numerous national and international institutions, including: Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (2025); Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2023); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2020); Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (solo, 2019); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2019); São Paulo Biennale (2013); Berlinische Galerie (solo, 2013); Camden Arts Centre, London (solo, 2009); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008); Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld (solo, 2006).