Lucia Kempkes
Lucia Kempkes
NATALIE BREHMER & LUCIA KEMPKES | Westwerk Hamburg
With the exhibition Sisters in Matter on a Ramble at Sunrise at Westwerk Hamburg, the artist duo Mahnke/Hoffmann (Paula Hoffmann & Laura Mahnke) celebrates the solidarity among female artists with material-based practices. The unifying element of the selected works is a playful yet precise approach to material, which is employed as a vessel for memory, personal experience, and vision. When juxtaposed, the works open up new perspectives on closeness, care, dependence, and reference.
Featuring works by Nicl Barbro, Natalie Brehmer, Paula Hoffmann, Lucia Kempkes, Carolina Lehan, Laura Mahnke and Sara Malie.
Dates: May 25, 2026 – June 7, 2026
Venue: Westwerk Hamburg, Admiralitätsstraße 74, 20459 Hamburg
Hours: Tue–Fri 4–7 p.m., Sat–Sun 12–3 p.m.
LUCIA KEMPKES & ROSALIE BECHER | Art Düsseldorf
Art Düsseldorf 2026 opening April 16: With Lucia Kempkes (*1988) and Rosalie Becher (*2000), we present two female artists who are reimagining traditional crafts with remarkable contemporary relevance. In an age of digital acceleration, both artists consciously opt for time-intensive, craft-based processes – not as a nostalgic look back, but as a progressive strategy to translate traditional materials into a new, contemporary visual language.
Rosalie Becher, who will graduate as a master’s student at the academy in Düsseldorf this summer, works with the medium of stained glass – a material historically linked to the visual language of sacred architecture. In her works, she translates this tradition into a contemporary visual world of urban fragments, façades, symbols and vistas. Light functions here not only as a material, but also as a narrative element. Her engagement with historical techniques even led her to collaborate on the restoration of a window element at Notre Dame, Paris – an experience that has had a lasting impact on her relationship with the history of materials.
Lucia Kempkes draws on the tradition of textile weaving and develops a painterly practice from it. Her works begin as paintings on individual threads, which are subsequently woven into fabrics. The result are shimmering textile landscapes whose motifs depict resilient plants capable of surviving even under extreme climatic conditions. Navigating between speculations about the future and poetic nostalgia, Kempkes reinterprets the tradition of landscape representation – except that here the ‘canvas’ itself is a living, textured fabric. The new series, which is being presented for the first time at Art Düsseldorf, follows the artist’s conceptual approach; she continually reflects on and expands her practice through teaching – not least through visiting professorships at the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Berlin University of the Arts.
Art Düsseldorf |17. – 19. April 2026 | Opening: 16. April | Galerie Judith Andreae | Booth J09
Lucia Kempkes
born 1988 in Xanten (Deutschland/Germany)