AREAL BÖHLER

VAW – Vitrine am Wasserturm

A newly founded exhibition space at Areal Böhler. Starting in April 2025, it will host quarterly exhibitions showcasing contemporary art.

Currently on show

AREAL BÖHLER

Saskia Tamara Kaiser – invited by ArtJunk

July 10 – September 27, 2025 Opening & Performance: Thursday, July 10, 2025, 7 PM

The new solo exhibition SHAME by Saskia Tamara Kaiser (*1994) inaugurates the second show at VAW – Vitrine am Wasserturm with a live performance by the artist.

In her performative and sculptural works, Saskia Tamara Kaiser explores the interconnections of human pain, shaped by her own biographical experiences. At VAW, she presents her new piece SHAME for the first time as part of a site-specific installation developed especially for the venue, accompanied by other performers. The performance addresses shame as a structural and gender-specific condition in a society increasingly dominated by pressures of visibility and representation.

In dialogue with the audience, grotesquely grinning smartphone mouths, blood-soaked bodies, and fragmented reflections merge into a media-critical allegory of the mechanisms of digital self-staging and self-conditioning.

Saskia Tamara Kaiser lives and works in Bonn and Düsseldorf. Since 2019, the originally trained glass painter is now studying sculpture in the class of Prof. Gregor Schneider at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her works have been widely exhibited and performed, most recently at Kunstmuseum Solingen, Künstlerverein Malkasten Düsseldorf, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Live Lab Studios Düsseldorf, and the Diözesanmuseum Rottenburg.

Past exhibitions

AREAL BÖHLER

Dardan Zhegrova – invited by ArtJunk April 11 – June 30, 2025 Opening: Thursday, April 10, 2025, 7 pm

The first of four solo shows in 2025 kicks off on Thursday, April 10, featuring Kosovar artist, journalist, and activist Dardan Zhegrova (b. 1991, Pristina).

Dardan Zhegrova's work spans sculpture, painting, performance, video, and sound art. At Vitrine am Wasserturm, he presents a new site-specific piece from his series of larger than life-sized, hand-sewn puppet figures, the so-called Hybrids, adorned with colorful drawings. Displayed in various poses, these amorphous sculptures explore concepts such as self-perception, otherness, role shifts, and identity formation. They are rooted in Zhegrova’s childhood experiences between his mother's seamstress job and the renowned Dodona puppet theater in Prishtina. During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Dodona became a sanctuary of cultural resistance and preservation for the Albanian community. Against this backdrop, Zhegrova’s Hybrids evoke spheres of emotions, historical perspectives, and, ultimately, an open dialogue with the viewer.

Dardan Zhegrova lives and works in Prishtina, Kosovo. His work has been shown internationally, most recently at MUDAM, Luxembourg (2024), The National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina, Autostrada Biennale, Prizren (2023), Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2022), and Fragile, Berlin (2020). In 2016, he was awarded the Artist of Tomorrow Award, leading to a residency at Residency Unlimited in New York City. In 2014, he was an artist in residenceat Villa Romana, Florence.