KVOST: The Ghosts Within Us

On September 10, KVOST opened the solo show Home’s Shadows by Izabella Gustowska. The Polish artist is the recipient of this year’s KVOST scholarship and the winner of the Claus Michaletz Preis 2026. Her practice operates at the intersection of bodies, subjectivity and feminism, and engages directly with memory, identity and temporality.

With this new series of works, Gustowska also explores family bonds, as a way to address the self in relation to the Other. Her focus is the relationship between siblings, specifically twins, and directly echoes her personal story. In one of the most recent works, She and I, the artist addresses her sister’s death and brings the conversation to an even more poignant level. The ghostly atmosphere of her artworks also links her practice to a form of spirituality, creating a ritual of conjuring spirits, and bringing past and present back into dialogue.

neugerriemschneider: Confronting Sensibilities

The intertwining of family and memory is also evident in the three new exhibitions that neugerriemschneider recently opened. billy childish and the children of the sect directly presents the artistic practice of a family across two generations of creatives: Billy Childish and his children, Huddie and Scout Hamper.

At the Linienstraße location, the gallery is also presenting its second exhibition with Cevdet Erek, them and us. Through stadium-like constructs, the artist explores the sonic potential of architecture, connecting ancient times to the modern world while suspending time and space. The exhibition title itself prompts viewers to understand them, and our societies as their reflection – as both shared and divergent.

A different and impactful form of familiarity is created with painting the path, an exhibition displaying side by side the work of Swedish artist Andreas Eriksson and South Korean artist Kim Chong Hak. The closeness arises from a shared sensibility toward nature and a predisposition to a secluded life.

Particularly moving are the bronze sculptures cast by Eriksson from the bodies of dead birds: a tender reflection on life and death, and on the concept of illusion. Alternating with them are two pieces from Kim’s personal collection of kirogi: hand-carved ducks gifted in South Korea to celebrate important occasions. Life and death, family moments, and memory intertwine once again, showing us the beauty that lies in the smallest things.

Trautwein Herleth: Collective Illusions

Connecting time to space, and life to death, is the exhibition Hollywood Forever by Kate Mosher Hall at Trautwein Herleth. Memory is addressed in the exhibition through two powerful levels. The paintings all represent the city of Los Angeles, using abstraction and layers of temporalities to show how perception and experience are constantly mediated and adaptable. 

What is familiar about the city becomes unknown through each layer. The title of the exhibition itself, Hollywood Forever, refers to a cemetery located on Santa Monica Boulevard, reminding us once again how important both the dead and the living are in keeping alive the dream that LA represents, and unveiling a side of its charming illusion that lies deep within our collective memory.

Boros Collection: Our Multilayered Present

Probably no other space in Berlin can summarize the multilayered soul of the city and the traces of memory as powerfully as the Boros Collection. Originally built as a World War II bunker, the building later served as a prison, a storage facility for exotic fruits sent from Cuba to the GDR, and ultimately as the most iconic techno club of the 1990s. The collectors Karen and Christian Boros purchased and reopened it to the public in the early 2000s, showcasing a new selection of artworks from their collection every four years.

This May, the Boros Collection opened its fifth presentation, which focuses on liminal layers of transience and inner states to address the troubling and precarious times we are living in. From the impact of cruelty and the twisted role of family powerfully addressed in Pol Taburet’s drawings, to the echoes of rape culture powerfully represented by Jill Mulleady, to immersive sound installations and intimate sculptures – like the one by Louis Fratino who shifts the focus to paternity – the presentation is a journey through our collective memory.

By linking once again the historically charged building to our compelling present, the exhibition provides us with provocative inputs to reshape our understanding of the world.

DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM: Between Fragility and Strength

During Berlin Art Week, Ersan Mondtag opened his first solo exhibition with DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM. Titled Dispair, the show navigates between personal history and collective memory to examine the impact of social relationships on both bodies and places. His large scale sculptures are made of carbonized wood, creating another powerful link between transience and memory. Mondtag’s practice revolves around the fragility of our societal structures and their twisted dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. By addressing them, his works open up a space to confront the present and re-imagine our collectivity.

“Neoliberalism with its cannibalistic exploitation of care, infrastructure, and natural resources as well as art, culture, and political and social utopias has instilled a sense in people that time is no longer moving forward. Today’s culture often merely recycles old forms instead of engendering radical innovations or visions of the future,” wrote Oliver Koerner von Gustorf in an essay about the exhibition, bringing the most pressing themes of our time into a new perspective.

Memory is a vital force, and today more than ever we should all use it to remember past mistakes and try not to repeat them. It echoes everywhere in life: in family dynamics, political conflicts, nature, and it is effectively used as a means to shape society. This selection of exhibitions to see in Berlin this October aims to remind us of its permeating power and its ability to connect past and future in a truly meaningful present. Don’t miss the chance to visit these thought-provoking exhibitions, and see where this journey takes you.