Jan Albers in 'Zugzwang' →

Brian Butler April 22, 2026

Jan Albers
May 9 – September 27, 2026 | kunsthaus nrw kornelimünster, Aachen

Jan Albers
*Sunshine Sprayer Shelp*, 2001
101 × 154 × 24 cm

Following the first chapter, „Klassenverhältnisse. Lehrende, Lernende, Künstler:innen“ in 2025, Kunsthaus NRW continues the exhibition this year with new works and thematic emphases. The exhibition explores the cosmos of the art academy through both traditional artistic genres and hybrid forms of contemporary artistic production. Alongside questions of technical training, it focuses on aspects such as conceptual thinking. It traces the historical development of art and the teaching of art since 1946 and examines relationships between teachers and students. At the same time, it addresses the global networks of art academies in North Rhine-Westphalia, points to alternative artistic paths beyond academic training, and considers the transition from study into the professional art world. Approximately 130 works from the Kunsthaus NRW collection will be presented, alongside selected loans from the Akademie-Galerie of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

More Info

Jan Albers in 'What Inspire the Artists for Their Ideas?' →

Brian Butler November 7, 2025

Jan Albers
November 7 – December 20, 2025 | Sanatorium, Istanbul

Featuring works by Jan Albers, Rey Akdogan, Burak Bedenlier, Irmak Canevi, Andy Fabo, Claus Föttinger, Kavachi, Simin Keramati, Mirjam Kuitenbrouwer, JiSun Lee, Yağız Özgen, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg and Jaan Toomik, 'What Inspire the Artists for Their Ideas?' explores the conditions and influences that shape artistic production.

Bringing together artists working across diverse geographies, the exhibition sheds light on the often-overlooked "formation processes" behind artistic creation. Curated by Necmi Sönmez, the show at Sanatorium features 13 artists working across painting, sculpture, installation, and drawing, with several participants presenting their work in Istanbul for the first time.

Contemporary economic, political, and social realities provide a critical framework for artistic production. The concepts artists develop in their studios and living spaces reveal not only their creative practice but also their responses to a constantly shifting world. Through works informed by cultural identity, belonging, and political positioning, the exhibition examines the multifaceted nature of artistic production.

More Info

Jan Albers: teNdertaNtrum at Van Horn →

Brian Butler September 6, 2025

Jan Albers
September 5 – October 25, 2025 | Van Horn, Düsseldorf

Jan Albers, *stRawbeRRyReef*, 2025
spray paint & polymer plaster on polystyrene & non-wood in acrylic glass box,
171 x 121 x 37 cm

Jan Albers describes his work as a kind of self-observation in action: “The great art is to experience yourself in the act of doing. The more varied the actions are, the more you learn about yourself.”
This attitude lies at the heart of his work. It is insight through action, artistic exploration without a fixed route, a continuous process of experience. Beauty, it seems, is not a goal for Albers, but a solution. Something that can arise from the work itself.

In this exhibition, strength meets softness, wildness meets sensitivity. As the exhibition title suggests, the work oscillates between opposites: ‘tender’ and ‘tantrum’ – delicacy and outburst. These are interwoven in a formal language that allows for both emotional depth and conceptual rigour.

What emerges is the expression of a dynamic, often contradictory process: a performative exploration of material, form and action. Albers’ relief works are performative settings, less objects than traces of an action. They are the expression of an intellectual and emotional, sometimes even spiritual process. It is not just about form, but about experience: erosion, friction, doubt, pain, happiness, curiosity. It takes courage to seek out the unfinished, to endure failure and inability, and even to use them as a springboard to the next level. The choice of materials is part of this search – open and sensual. What emerges remains open to interpretation: it is not uncommon for a work to only take shape or shift when viewed. It is not so much about realising a design, as about exploring a path.

More Info

mightyhighOnlight, 2018, bronze, 90 x 60 x 25 cm. Ed. 5 + 2 AP, Image courtesy of VAN HORN, Dusseldorf

Jan Albers: Fox/Jensen, Sydney, Australia

Brian Butler March 30, 2018

Jan Albers
Fox/Jensen
CNR Hampden Street & Cecil Lane
23 A Roylston Street
Paddington
NSW 2021
Australia
Opens Thursday, 5 April, 6 PM
Jan Albers studied painting at the famous Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. Early on he sensed that working within the established protocols of paint and canvas felt too restraining. He has gone on to produce a major body of work that shuns the flatness of the picture plane replacing it with a divergent mix of high and low art materials that are bolshy and strident, elegant and considered, yet seldom demure.

As much as Albers wished as a student to eschew convention, his work touches lightly on various 20th century moments. One feels echoes of Judd and Chamberlain in their robust materiality and determined “object” status - the visceral impact of Fontana’s puncturing of the picture plane, in his “chain-saw” lacerations. But there are also reverberations in form and composition that recall his namesake Anni Albers’ refined geometries, or Frank Stella’s shaped canvases.

As cognizant as he clearly is of history, Albers feels determined to extend his own artistic vocabulary so that it embraces a range of connections to architecture, even the environment, complete with its blend of allure and toxicity.

As Stephen Berg has described…“the entire picture is actually a permanent construction site alternating between destruction and repair.” This altercation between making and unmaking, harmony and disharmony runs through all of Albers work. One gets the sense that he views most material as potentially “uncooperative” and unruly – something to be tamed or at the very least bridled.

In all of his works you are compelled to look into them rather than at them from a respectful distance – the enticement and persuasion of the poisonous perhaps. Their complex topography, their nooks and crannies, their structural depth and intricacy suggest an entirely different reading of space that isn’t pictorial nor is it truly sculptural. Whatever the case, Albers is certainly up-dating the bas-relief and its traditional viewpoint.

The gallery is thrilled to present a range of major works by Jan Albers, including the large and magnificent bronze, mightyhighOnlight and stunning new ceramic works alongside further examples of his diverse and innovative practice.
It is also particularly pleasing, that during this years Art Basel Hong Kong, four large scale works were placed in major collections in Taipei and in a private museum collection in Shanghai. The response to his work at Art Basel Hong Kong has been overwhelming. We are delighted to say that Jan will also be present for the opening in Sydney.
More information

1301PE at ALAC

Ricardo Alessio January 27, 2017

Jan Albers: hallOfzinOgen at Van Horn Duesseldorf

Ricardo Alessio September 1, 2015

Jan Albers

hallOfzinOgen

5 September - 23 October 2015
Opening Friday 4 September, 6-10 pm

VAN HORN
DANIELA STEINFELD

ACKERSTR. 99
40233 DUESSELDORF
GERMANY

http://www.van-horn.net/exhibitions/current.html

Jan Albers: cOlOny cOlOr at Kunstpalais Erlangen

Ricardo Alessio July 11, 2015

Jan Albers: cOlOny cOlOr

Opening: July 10, 2015

Exhibition: July 11, 2015 - September 06, 2015

Kunstpalais

Marktplatz 1

91054 Erlangen

Germany

http://www.kunstpalais.de/en/13/Current.html

Sean Knibb blogs Jan Albers

Ricardo Alessio May 21, 2015

Jan Albers: The Energetic Grid

Maybe it was the garden-like quality of Jan Albers work that first attracted Sean to it. In his recent Henry Hurt vs. Holly Heal series (seen below) the skewed squares seem to have the character of a flower, like gridded petals blowing in the wind.

The pieces in the series have a dimensionality that expands as the as the viewing angle changes. As constructions, they're ingeniously engineered. Their texture radiates a kind of kinetic energy, seeming to move before your eyes. Their structure is both flower-like and architectural, like something made by bees in a kaleidoscope. The references to Cubism are hard to deny. The pieces are built from polystyrene (the stuff packing peanuts are made from) and/or wood and then covered in spray paint, or as in the gray piece above, graphite.

Jan Albers cOlOny cOlOr solo show at Von Der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal

Ricardo Alessio February 20, 2015

Jan Albers

cOlOny cOlOr

Solo-show at Von Der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal

March 22 - June 28, 2015, opening Sunday March 22, 3 pm

http://www.von-der-heydt-kunsthalle.de/

The exhibition will travel to Kunstpalais Erlangen.

An extensive catalogue is published, with texts by Markus Heinzelmann, Museum Morsbroich and Brigitte Kölle, Kunsthalle Hamburg

1301PE at ALAC, Jan. 29 - Feb. 1

Ricardo Alessio January 29, 2015

1301PE is pleased to participate in Art Los Angeles Contemporary.

We are presenting works by Jan Albers, Fiona Banner, Uta Barth, Kirsten Everberg, Ann Veronica Janssens, Jorge Méndez Blake, Jorge Pardo, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pae White, and Paul Winstanley.

If you would like additional information, please contact us at info@1301pe.com