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 four invited artists, who have Chinese 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 developments in contemporary possibilities for painting to express ‘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."