Our team is stoked to announce that we signed Cathrin Hoffmann, a German-Iranian artist based in Berlin working across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her practice examines the body as an unstable and constructed condition, shaped by technological, spatial, and material forces.
Hoffmann has exhibited internationally at institutions and galleries including Nicodim Gallery, Public Gallery, KUNSTHALLE GIESSEN, Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr, The Hole, and X Museum. Her work has been presented in solo booth formats at Frieze London and The Armory Show.
She has undertaken residencies at Palazzo Monti and PLOP London, and has been selected for the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York. Her works are held in collections including the Green Family Art Foundation, Longlati Foundation, X Museum, and Museu Inimá de Paula.
We’re excited to present a new body of works on paper by @cathrin.hoffmann at @paperpositions tomorrow.
Her abstract figures oscillate between the mechanical and the organic — at once geometric, fluid, and subtly distorted. Hoffmann’s work reflects on the tensions of contemporary existence, tracing the fragile boundary between the physical body and its digital extension.
Come find us at Booth 10 ✨
#cathrinhoffmann #paperpositions #fridaybirdart #worksonpaper #contemporaryart
It’s happening. 💔
As already announced in MAXIMAL, the displacement is now taking its course: I’m losing my studio.
Because I spend most of my life in it, a space more than 40 minutes away is not an option for me, especially as my apartment was only 3 minutes away from the studio.
I’ve therefore decided to also leave my small apartment and instead look for or create a live-work studio space.
I’m happy to downsize significantly from my current 110 sqm workspace and am looking for a live-work space or apartment up to 80 sqm in Berlin.
If anyone hears of anything, please message me. Every lead means a lot. Thank you for sharing.
Installation shot of my solo exhibition Sill (March 6 – April 11) at @public.gallery
The starting point of the work is acedia — an old term describing a state of wakefulness without the ability to act: being present, perceiving, reacting, yet unable to stabilize one’s relation to the world.
The title Sill refers to a threshold — a place from which one can still observe the world without intervening in it. The works therefore show bodies not as actors, but as states: present, awake, and enduring.
Some installation shots and details of my new sculpture
𝘛𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘈𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯, 2026
fibre concrete and epoxy on synthetic polymer, wood, steel
172 x 187 x 98 cm
This work is part of my recent solo exhibition 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭 at @public.gallery
Every original print begins long before the ink meets the paper.
Right now, artist @cathrin.hoffmann is in the workshop with master printer Ulrich Kühle at @keystoneeditionsberlin – carving, testing, refining. Each cut into the wood is a decision that cannot be undone. Colors are mixed and tested, again and again, until it feels exactly right. And slowly the woodcut takes shape one careful choice at a time.
We are thrilled to be working with Cathrin for the first time. At @paperpositions Berlin, she will present an entirely new body of work for FRIDAY BIRD, a woodcut alongside several works on paper, all shown together for the very first time.
Come and see the result in person. 🖤🪶
📍 Paper Positions Berlin | Apr 30 - May 3 | Hall 1, Stand 10 | Tempelhof Airport
#fridaybirdart #cathrinhoffmann #keystoneeditionsberlin #contemporary #paperpositions
My solo exhibition 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭 is still on view at @public.gallery until April 11.
𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭 describes a state of suspension.
A threshold. A place between.
From Old English syll meaning foundation, threshold, base. A structure that separates and connects at once. A place to pause, to look, without fully entering or leaving.
For me, 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭 becomes an image of an acedic in-between.
A site from which one still perceives, but no longer intervenes.
A physical and mental condition between withdrawal and action, observation and participation.
At the same time, the word echoes the geological sill.
A layer of magma that intrudes into rock, cools, and hardens in place.
Latent, transformative energy held in suspension.
I think of the works as such layers.
Pressure, held.
Movement, withheld.
They are not political through statement, but through experience.
They negotiate agency and exhaustion, subject and world.
In a moment that demands constant activity, I’m drawn to radical passivity.
Not collapse, but a state of sustained tension.
I’m interested in what happens when rising still seems possible, but the relation to the world that would make action meaningful begins to loosen.
Bodies that remain present, without acting.
Not as failure, but as a condition.
The Glow That Keeps Us Awake, 2026
Only a few days left to see Sill at Public Gallery, London.
The hand in this painting is a loose reference to The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, a painting I keep coming back to. What stays with me is how direct it is. There is no idealisation, just the physical fact of the body, its weight, its stillness, and the unsettling closeness of mortality. It’s probably this uncompromising realism that led Dostoevsky to write that “a painting like that can make you lose your faith.”
I was interested in carrying some of that feeling into this work, not as a quote, but as a trace. The hand becomes a point of contact, something between vulnerability and presence. Where Holbein’s figure is fully given over to stillness, mine remains caught in a kind of suspended wakefulness, unable to rest, held in a light that keeps it present.
For me, this also touches on acedia, that subtle state in which you begin to lose your relation to yourself. A kind of inner distance opens up, where being alone with yourself becomes almost unbearable, and even the most intimate space no longer feels like home.
Only a few days remain before the show closes.
@public.gallery
We are delighted to present 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭, a solo exhibition of new painting and sculpture by Berlin-based artist Cathrin Hoffmann, opening Friday March 6 from 6 – 8 pm. Hoffmann’s practice has long been concerned with states rather than subjects – her figures often hold durational poses, their confinement dictated by the limits of the canvas. In a marked formal shift, recent works turn toward the monochromatic: reddish-brown tones, from dark ochre to rust and clay, dominate the palette. 𝘚𝘪𝘭𝘭, the exhibition’s title, frames this shift and operates as both metaphor and site. Architecturally, a sill suggests a ledge – a place of pause and rest, but also of voyeuristic consumption. Geologically, it refers to a sheet of magma that intrudes into existing rock, cooling and solidifying in place. Evoking sedimentary layers and the earth’s core, the paintings’ sandy, coarse surfaces arrest the moving eye and resist the speed of digital consumption, embedding resistance within the stillness of Hoffmann’s figures and demonstrating an evolving concern for radical passivity.
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Cathrin Hoffmann
𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐𝘵 𝘏𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, 2026
Fibre concrete and epoxy on synthetic polymer
111 × 220 × 75 cm
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@cathrin.hoffmann
