We are delighted to begin the year 2026 by welcoming the PArt Foundation from Hamburg as our guest at the Van der Grinten Galerie. In a close curatorial collaboration with foundation founder Rene S. Spiegelberger we have brought together a representative selection of works by renowned contemporary artists to present in our beautiful Cologne gallery space. The pieces exhibited – objects, sculptures, hand drawings, photographs and prints – were all created in recent years exclusively for PArt Editions, a companion structure that, among other things, enables the foundation to support young talent with exhibitions and publications and to further contemporary art education and appreciation by supplying more than 160 schools with teaching materials free-of-charge.

Now, for the first time, these works will be shown together in a gallery context where visitors can meander from one artistic offering to the next as if being treated to the showing of a private collection, where viewers can engage with a wide variety of different aesthetics content and artistic approaches. This little parcours is designed to stimulate, surprise, entrance and give pause for thought. Spanning a diverse and unusual arc, the exhibition offers a wonderful opportunity to discover and admire original works exemplary of the oeuvre of a range of internationally recognized artists. And: these representative works are also available for purchase at attractive prices. We invite you to experience the work of the following artists…

The work of LEIKO IKEMURA (*1951) revolves around the delicate and often magical connection between humans, animals, and nature. Shimmering landscapes are populated by hybrid figures – part girl, part rabbit – that inhabit an intermediate world where the boundaries between identity and reality become blurred. Her paintings and sculptures blend echoes of Japanese spirituality with Western artistic tradition, evoking femininity, vulnerability, and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness through fragile, almost ghostly images. Her series „Awakening“ includes four glass sculptures which also unfold a dreamlike and poetic imagery. In delicate shades of yellow, pink, violet and blue, they oscillate between figuration and abstraction, tying in with the artist’s central motif: the chimera — a mythical hybrid creature combining human and animal features. Their shiny surfaces of the sculptures subtly refract light, making them appear to glow from within.

In his new Sun series, UGO RONDINONE (*1964), one of the most influential contemporary artists on the international scene, presents a powerful evolution of his iconic concentric color spaces. This silkscreen print features pulsating circles in black, red and blue, their subtle transitions creating a meditative depth effect. Rondinone transforms the basic shape of the circle into a symbol of light, energy and time, combining austere geometry with vibrant colour intensity to create a striking expression of his globally acclaimed work.

Created by STEPHAN BALKENHOL (*1957), one of the leading artists in contemporary figurative sculpture and one of the most important sculptors internationally, the sculptures ‘Woman’ and ‘Man’ offer collectors the opportunity to acquire a pair of iconic contemporary artworks. Balkenhol’s anonymous figures, carved from logs with a chisel or cast in bronze and painted, do not tell stories. Rather, they provide a projection surface for human experience, and thus evoke emotion nevertheless. Each sculpture was created using the classic bronze casting process undergoind numerous production stages and finishing processes before Balkenhol gave each its characteristic paint finish, creating a  unique work of art.

In an opulent, ironically exaggerated pose of authority, THORSTEN BRINKMANN (*1971) presents himself as a ‘king’ — or rather, a parody of one. Fifty large-format Polaroids were taken on an improvised stage made of carpets, curtains and found objects from his studio at Supersense in Vienna, using the last color film from the rare 24×20-inch camera. Each photograph is unique, characterised by spontaneous exposure errors, color shifts and flowing image edges — embracing chance as an artistic accomplice. The entire series is numbered, stamped and signed by the artist on the back.

The edition created by KATHARINA GROSSE (*1961) in correspondence with her work Canyon (2022) consists of unique pieces produced in series at the Kunstgießerei St. Gallen art foundry and in the artist’s studio. The individual works are based on five different basic forms, which were shaped into a variety of spatial structures using a steel roller. Grosse then processed these structures using spray technology. Light and shadow serve to enhance the appearance of the objects dramatically.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE (*1955) is one of the world’s most significant and well-established contemporary artists. He works in the media of drawing, literature, film, performance, music, theatre and cross-media concepts. His work is rooted in politics, science, literature and history, and always leaves room for contradiction and uncertainty.
With his Trees, William Kentridge revisits one of the central motifs of his oeuvre – the tree as a symbol of memory, growth and rootedness. Since the early 1990s, trees have frequently appeared as a central element in the artist‘s drawings, films and stage designs – as a living archive of human experience that embodies both vulnerability and permanence. The combination of black ink and the yellowed pages of an old dictionary creates a tension between language and nature, knowledge and transience, which precisely reflects Kentridge‘s artistic thinking. The twelve unique pieces, created especially for the PArt Foundation, show variations on this theme: gnarled figures, some weathered by the wind, which assert themselves on the printed pages like memories in the flow of time. Each tree has the character of an improvised score – spontaneous, rhythmic, yet imbued with a deep poetic rigour. In this series of works, Kentridge intensifies his exploration of drawing as a remenant of the movement of thought. As in his animated films, the trees become witnesses to a continuous process of becoming and passing away. They are rooted in paper, which itself is a carrier of history, and unfold as fragile signs of human existence.
The series Five Heads for Zurich, 1916 comprises five sculptural prints in the form of three-dimensional lithographs of personalities who were in Zurich in 1916: the Dadaists Tristan Tzara, Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball, the writer James Joyce, and Vladimir Lenin. Dada and its aftermath run like a thread through Kentridge’s work – with a particular focus on language at the limits of its meaning. The edition was produced in collaboration with Kentridge’s longtime companion Mark Attwood at The Artists’ Press in South Africa. All works in an edition of 35 copies are signed and numbered by the artist and bear the blind stamp of The Artists’ Press at the bottom edge, co-published in 2025with PArt Concept for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung/NZZ am Sonntag. The prints are executed in various techniques on different handmade papers. The sculptures stand on a wooden disc with magnetic fixation. Their collaged and partly -torn elements give them a unique character.
The Headlines edition comprises six woodcuts reminiscent of newspaper headlines, their ambiguity echoing the Dadaist tradition. Texts from Tristan Tzara’s manifesto, Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate and a poem by Bertolt Brecht are combined with a reference to Kentridge’s own art centre, The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg. The prints were created in collaboration with Sbongiseni Khulu at the David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg. They are based on reproductions from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of 1 February 1916 from the Swiss National Library – the day the Cabaret Voltaire opened in Zurich, creating a direct link to the nucleus of the Dada movement. The printing blocks were made of ash and oak, all save one cut entirely by hand, and printed with a red ink mixture.

In his edition There’s a Riot Going On, STEFAN MARX (*1979) combines the austerity of black-and-white typography with the opulence of handmade Ebru paper in vibrant colours. His affinity for Japan, where he gained an appreciation for exquisite paper, forms the basis of this series of 52 works in a 70 x 50 cm format. Marx responds to the sometimes radically varying structures and lush colour palette with ink, an airbrush, stamps, and drawings, offering a playful yet precise reaction to the visual tension. The text THERE’S A RIOT GOING ON appears as a leitmotif throughout the series, which is impressive both for its formal coherence and for the diversity of the individual pieces..

KARIN KNEFFEL (*1957) uses her technical mastery to place everyday motifs in contexts that reflect and question our reality. In this PArt edition, she turns her gaze to Switzerland, drawing on memories of her own childhood. She first expressed this perspective in an early series of watercolours, and four screen prints from this series form the basis of the edition. Alongside depictions of groups of men in the mountains and of skiers, Kneffel has expanded the series to include apples, one of her iconic fruit motifs. Each unique piece is coloured by hand, with subtle changes to the motif lending each a distinctive character.

MICHAEL WESELY (*1963) is a celebrated master the extremely long exposure, in which he documents the change of objects over time. His bouquet still lifes are among Wesely’s best.known series of works. A unique triptych as well as unique single motifs are available, realized in the beautiful technique of  UltraSec lamination on ESG white glass, which lends the color photographs a particular depth and intensity.