Group Exhibition: Fluid Icons | CMC Studio

with Michal Andrysiak, Saba Arat, Anna Orlikowska, Felicitas Butt, Elena Grossi, O Gudzowski, Patrik Kiss & Liliána Pálfai, Am Nasr, Metis Pertsch, Allistair Walter, Matthias Winkler

Guided Tours of the Exhibition: 09.05 at 18:00 & 10.05 at 14:00

In a present where images circulate endlessly and meanings shift continuously, the question of the iconic becomes connected to power and role models: not as something stable, but as something to be challenged and transformed.
The works of eleven artists move between projection and search, liberation and anchoring. They negotiate the relationship between dominant images and overlooked interactions and struggles. The exhibition space is there to ponder, reflect, and interact. Take your time.

1) „Adhar“ by Am Nasr
2) „Unbraiding the Whip“ by Anna Orlikowska
3) „giving only good, only good when giving“ by Elena Grossi
4) „At the End, All You Own Is Your Shadow“ by Felicitas Butt
5) „ASCENT“ by Liliána Pálfai and Patrik Kiss
6) „Icon I Can’t“ by Matthias Winkler
7) „TOY“ by Metis Pertsch
8) „Son of Shilada“ by Michal Andrysiak
9) „hair washed“ and „nails did“ by O Gudzowski
10) „Yörük/Nomad“ by Saba Arat
11) „Fading Icon“ by Allistair Walter

 

About the Artists

1) Am Nasr is an Egyptian Berlin-based Artist. Coming from a background in architecture, he studied Fine Arts with Prof. Jimmy Robert at the Berlin University of the Arts. He works with moving images, sculpture, performance, and photography, utilizing the power of movement and self-expression to explore imposed societal narratives. His work reflects on constructed forms of belonging and global citizenship, questioning rigid social binaries and the political consequences of these structures.

2) Anna Orlikowska is a Berlin-based multimedia artist who explores emotional and perceptual landscapes where reality merges with fiction and memory with imagination. She invokes hic sunt dracones (“here be dragons”) as a metaphor for contemporary absences. Her practice examines nostalgia, memory, and time, asking how perception shapes everyday life. Rooted in photography and expanded into video, installations, and objects, it centers on capturing the transient. She focuses on “blank spots”: overexposed areas, silences of history, and overlooked moments. These gaps invite reinterpretation. Rather than fixed narratives, she creates layered, ambiguous works that blur document and staging.

3) Elena Grossi (Rome, 1999) is an artist based in Berlin whose practice revolves around drawing and its status as work-in-progress. Her work is limited to few materials, mostly graphite, paper and tape, and deals with the emotional implications of drawing’s materiality as well as with the events and accidents of a studio practice. She is currently studying at the UdK after having received her BFA in Drawing at the Lisbon University of Fine Arts. She has shown work at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan (2022), at Kunstverein Zink in Vienna (2024) and Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin (2025).

4) Felicitas Butt is a German-Kashmiri artist based in Berlin. In her artistic practice, she dedicates herself to exploring social and natural structures and the ways in which they shape perception, behavior and a sense of belonging. Nature functions in her work both as a source of imagery and as a mirror of complex, interconnected systems. Through observation and research, she places materials under tension and translates processes. Her works emerge from the exploration of material and technique, moving between installation, light, drawing and painting.

5) Liliána Pálfai and Patrik Kiss are a creative duo bridging digital character-driven storytelling with immersive technical architecture. Liliána, an Animation graduate, provides the visual and emotional foundation of their work. Her practice is rooted in childhood nostalgia, utilizing intricate character designs to explore the layers of the psyche and her personal journey of self-discovery.
Patrik is a software developer and creative technologist working at the intersection of programming and sensory design. Specializing in interactive installations, he provides the technical framework that allows static art to transcend the physical plane.

6) Matthias Winkler (born 1981 in Austria) is an artist and designer based in Berlin working between fine art, craft, and fashion. The practice focuses on the relationship between the body and crafted objects, approaching footwear and wearable pieces as sculptural forms. Emphasis on materiality and craftsmanship explores the reinterpretation of traditional techniques in a contemporary context. Studies include Fine Art and Painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and an MA in Fashion (Footwear) at the Royal College of Art, London (2013). Work has been shown internationally, including London, Berlin, New York, and Osaka (Expo 2025). In 2022, the Modepreis der Stadt Wien was awarded. Based in Berlin, ongoing projects explore material experimentation and sculptural approaches to objects for the body.

7) Metis Pertsch is an artist based in Leipzig and Berlin who studied sculptural and site-specific art in Halle, Leipzig, and Vienna. In her practice, she engages with sexuality, corporeality, and queer visibility. Her work often begins with body-related and intimate materials, as well as an exploration of the body as both an intimate space and a site of social negotiation. In her work, she combines personal and political questions, exploring them through multimedia approaches. She currently works increasingly in sculptural and installation-based formats, translating performative approaches into spatial works.

8) Michal Andrysiak’s practice moves fluidly between photography, video, painting, sculpture, and theatrical design, weaving together distinct disciplines into a cohesive visual language. With more than a decade of experience working across portraiture, editorial commissions, and collaborations with theatres, magazines, fashion designers, musicians, and performance artists, Andrysiak has cultivated a sensibility that is both technically rigorous and emotionally charged. While photography and videography form the foundation of his artistic trajectory, his recent turn toward painting and sculpture signals a deliberate move beyond the camera’s frame. In these works, Andrysiak extends his command of composition, light, and colour into more tactile forms, where the hand becomes as central as the lens.

9) O Gudzowski is a transdisciplinary artist based in Berlin, with a background in architecture and curatorial practice. O’s work engages with collective memory, space, and communal structures. A strand of more personal work turns inward: body-related, subjective, sometimes fragmented, emerging from physical processes and touching on experiences outside normative reality.

10) Saba Arat: I am a Turkish-born, Berlin-based artist working at the intersection of traditional hand-weaving, sound, and interactive environment. Since 2019, I have been living and creating in Wedding, where my atelier and daily practice are deeply rooted in the neighborhood. I hand-weave kilims using wool and conductive fibres, embedding sensors and electronics directly into the textile structure. These woven surfaces become playable instruments and participatory installations that respond to touch, pressure, and movement, generating sound and creating collective listening experiences. My work treats weaving as an ancestral technology and a contemporary interface, focusing on embodied knowledge, shared presence, and everyday encounters in urban space.

11) Allistair Walter is an artist whose practice is rooted in an expanded understanding of painting. Working across oil, resin, print, and occasional textile experiments, he explores the instability of images and the fragmentation of the body. His works move between figuration and abstraction, engaging with memory, intimacy, and the tension between preservation and disappearance.