Mysterious Travels

The group exhibition ‘Mysterious Travels’ by artists Wang Zhibo (born in China in 1981, lives in Berlin), Youngjun Lee (born 1983 in Korea, lives in Munich), Jaemin Lee (born 1987 in Korea, lives in Munich), Charmaine Poh (born 1990 in Singapur, lives in Berlin) – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2025 – and Kun Su (born 1993 in China, lives in Munich) comments on ‘interculturality’ by taking up and unravelling a variety of themes, including modernist narratives and geopolitics, while exploring connections between places, geographies, cultures and traditions. ‘Mysterious Travels’ questions the hierarchies in our understanding of the past and examines the effects of the passage of time and the diversity of identities. The five invited artists, who have Chinese, Singaporean or Korean as well as German backgrounds and differ in terms of generation, media and approach, transform the entire gallery space. The exhibition offers the opportunity to experience an open dialogue between Asian/German artists and reflects on contemporary artistic expressions on ‘travelling’ between identities.

Charmaine Poh about her work for the exhibition:

"These six stills are from my three-channel video installation currently showing at PalaisPopulaire, Berlin, titled “The Moon is Wet”. This work retells Singapore's history through three femme characters across centuries - the sea goddess Mazu, a "comb sister" Majie, and a contemporary domestic worker from Indonesia. I propose the task of re-imagining ancestry and belonging, of travelling beyond hegemonic geographies and instead, deeper within."

Youngjun Lee about his work for the exhibition:

"Constantly rotating the surface and viewing it from every angle, I travel through an exploration of pictorial space. While musical notation records time from left to right, I try to build and deconstruct layers as voices in a fugue interweave, compressing time into depth. Notation/Fugue is a record of this ongoing, unfinished exploration."

Kun Su about his work for the exhibition:

"The six works I have selected were created between 2023 and 2025. They reflect my ongoing engagement with the materiality and tactile qualities of inorganic matter. Beneath this formal observation lies a deeper inquiry into my perception of anxiety and spiritual crisis within the turbulence and uncertainty of our contemporary global condition. In my practice, I intentionally withhold personal cultural identity and political orientation in order to foreground a focus on the universal and spiritual dimensions of human experience."

Jaemin Lee about his works for the exhibtion:

"I drew inspiration for "Love Like a Bouquet" from the blue plates me and my partner collected over time and during our travels, to transform our shared rituals and gestures into a visual narrative. I used the lightness of watercolor and paper to express a love that was brief yet intense, delicate as paper and easily shattered, taking cues from the decorative motifs of Royal Delft porcelain. The edges of the plates are filled with blooming flowers, evoking the fullness of love and the joy of those fleeting moments. The center features symbols drawn from animation, comics, cinema, and landscapes, representing the fragmented and tender emotions of a love that could not endure. Words left unsaid at parting are woven into the composition, capturing the portrait of a love that has broken yet lingers in memory. As time passes, the dried flowers we occasionally encounter have lost their color, yet they carry traces of the vibrant hues and scents that once filled our space—our love in full bloom. Even the vanished fragrance and colors remain, like fossils in the heart, preserving the memory of what once was. Looking back at the pure and beautiful—but imperfect—versions of ourselves, we feel gratitude for those fleeting moments of love. It was because of them that we were happy."

Wang Zhibo about her work for the exhibition:

"I love this quote Claes Oldenburg wrote in 1967: 'I am for art that unfolds like a map, that you can squeeze, like your sweetie’s arms, or kiss, like a pet dog. Which expands and squeaks, like an accordion, which you can spill your dinner on, like an old tablecloth.'. I feel, that the paintings and drawings shown in this exhibition resonate with it in some way — even though the context has changed over the past 60 years.”