16/10/2026
Opens tonight
Olaf Metzel
‘Mondrian Ambiente’
Friday, October 16th, 6 - 8 pm
In his fifth solo exhibition at Wentrup, Olaf Metzel takes on modern architecture and design. Mondrian Ambiente is a formal exploration, or rather the formal exposure, of objects and ideas. In it, Metzel subjects the supposed clarity of modernist form and order to the forces that have long defined his work: irregularity, fragmentation and ambiguity.
Across disciplines, Metzel’s material is made illegible, but tangible. In his sculptures, he turns his subjects against themselves, twists, warps and crushes them, distorting the clean, symmetrical structures they claim to depict, breaking their straight lines and stripping them of their familiarity and beauty to the point of irritability. But as Loos, another grandfather of modernity, pondered, architecture should please everyone, and art: no one.
Images:
1-3. Olaf Metzel, ‘Hanspalatz’, 2026. Aluminum, stainless steel, digital print, 145 x 130 x 28 cm. Photos: Leonie Felle.