Ian Waelder: Zungen / Mara Wohnhaas: What do we want that seduces us and The Anecdote

Ian Waelder: Zungen 
As part of the exhibition series for fear of continuity problems
January 31–March 15, 2026

The exhibition Zungen by Ian Waelder is the third in the series for fear of continuity problems, which explores the notion of memory in parts of GAK’s indoor space and in the poster frames outside.

The conversation around Ian Waelder’s exhibition started with a child standing before the family bookshelf. Still very small the child could only reach the lower books, but over the years and as they bacame taller, more shelves and different books could be accessed. This access, reaching up or bending down is something one regularly performs in front of books. Accordingly, knowledge and memory are also connected to reach, in terms of body and language. And they intertwine.
 
Within Ian Waelder’s exhibition at GAK sits a space with a low ceiling, a sort of box, which one is invited to enter. If one is too tall to walk upright, one has to crouch down inside to explore the series of photographs repeatedly depicting a plant, documenting its growth over the years. The photographs capture and retrieve time as being intimately connected to the artist himself—the plant was given to his mother on the day of his birth and since then grows alongside him.

The moment of repetition, that reappears in the work for GAK's outside space as well, regularly features in the work of Waelder. Embedded in this repetition is an insistence which is trying to grasp something that is present yet hidden. On the outside wall that usually holds thirteen poster frames, a series of sculptures extends into the space of passersby. Based on a shoe last that repeatedly appears in Waelder’s work, these sculptural objects, like GAK’s ashtray next to the entrance, offer themselves as holders for something to be stored or tucked away, creating a space for slightly unconscious and casual contact. 

Upcoming in the series:
Hella Gerlach, March 21–May 3, 2026 / Cécile B. Evans, May 23–July 5, 2026 / Julia Horstmann, July 11–August 23, 2026.

Mara Wohnhaas: What do we want that seduces us & The Anecdote
January 31–May 3, 2026 

With What do we want that seduces us and The Anecdote, GAK presents the first institutional solo exhibitions by Mara Wohnhaas. Wohnhaas’s work investigates mechanisms of thought, language, perception, and spatial structures, taking up their internal logics and contradictions and stretching, destabilizing, or pushing them to the point of absurdity. An event or a brief performative moment often serves as the point of departure for her sculptures, performances, drawings, photographs, and videos.

In What do we want that seduces us, two reconstructions of an illusory stage face one another. Wohnhaas approaches these sculptures with meticulous precision, reproducing details such as the fabric of the stage backdrop and the wood veneer with exacting precision, leaving only the exterior sides and their respective surfaces visible. The magic trick itself remains both present and absent. Moving between minimal sculpture and stage set, technical logic and illusion, What do we want that seduces us raises questions about what we see, what we believe, and what we want to know.

The Anecdote unfolds as a more intimate space in which Wohnhaas engages questions of value and the production of meaning. Bringing together snapshots and signlike traces of events, The Anecdote deliberately withholds the punch line typically associated with the anecdotal form. Instead, the exhibition hovers between logic and chance, truthfulness and ambiguity.

Out of seemingly coherent connections, Wohnhaas’s works generate relationships in which the circulation and relativity of knowledge, reason, truth, and appearance collaborate in a seductive and often humorous way. 

With kind support of: