Until October 5, 2025, the Schweinfurt Art Gallery (Germany) presents Rolf Sachs: be-rühren, the largest institutional exhibition ever dedicated to the artistThe title, a play on the German verb berühren (“touch”), sums up the essence of the journey: an invitation to a direct and sensorial contact with the works, but also with the emotions and memories that they evoke.
The exhibition occupies the entire ground floor of the museum and unfolds without chronological order, favoring instead a thematic approach. Visitors are invited to enter a creative universe spanning over thirty years of research, characterized by irony, empathy, and constant experimentation with everyday materials and objects.
Transformed objects and Alpine memory
One of the most recurring themes of the exhibition concerns the transformation of common elements into aesthetic and poetic experiences. In Fear (2013) and sisyphus, as well as in the large display cases filled with hay, wool, manure and horsehair, Sachs reinterprets the relationship with the material and with the Alpine cultural roots.
The environment also re-emerges among the works Ha-all of the 90s, where the artist exalted the emotional potential of a seemingly banal material such as sound-absorbing panels.
Motion photography
The photographic section reveals Sachs's attention to time and movement. In the cycles Moving Stills e Shadows, cans, spaghetti, and glasses become unexpected protagonists, suspended between everyday life and abstraction. The project is even more personal Camera in Motion, a year of shots along the Albula railway line (a UNESCO heritage site), where the landscape flows like a fleeting memory trapped in the light.
Revisited design and function
The exhibition brings to light the conceptual design works of the 90s. The seats and tables of the series p-arts + fun c'tion they hold up without screws or nails, relying solely on gravity and friction: a reflection on the temporariness and freedom of form.
The famous chair reinvention project Horgenglarus It has continued for over thirty years: silicone, wax, slate or resin modify the perception of an anonymous piece of furniture, transforming it into an object of identity.
Painting as a new frontier
Since 2020, Rolf Sachs has devoted himself with increasing intensity to painting, which is now presented in the main hall of the museum. The series Défroidssage, Can Paintings e Touchée explore the physical gesture and the immediate relationship between hand, color and canvas. In particular, the tactile works made with the fingers (Touchée) reflect the attempt to make the intangible visible, to transfer emotions and moods onto canvas.
An international career
Born in 1955 and now residing in Rome, Sachs has worked across sculpture, photography, design, and even opera and ballet sets. His works have been exhibited in internationally renowned museums, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the MAK in Vienna, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
In parallel with the exhibition, the publishing house DISTANZ publishes a 300-page monograph, edited by Coralie Malissard and Salvatore Lacagnina, with critical contributions and a rich iconographic apparatus (summer 2025).
Information
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Location: Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, Rüfferstraße 4, Schweinfurt (Germany)
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Date: July 18 – October 5, 2025
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Opening hours: daily 10.00:19.00–21.00:XNUMX; Thursday until XNUMX:XNUMX; closed on Mondays (open on public holidays)
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Official website: www.kunsthalle-schweinfurt.de
With be-rühren, the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt offers an immersive itinerary in which the art of Rolf Sachs It doesn't simply display forms, but invites us to feel, remember, and participate. It's an opportunity to explore a creative language that constantly moves between play and reflection, concreteness and poetry.
