Claire de Santa Coloma: Urform

We are pleased to present Claire de Santa Coloma's third solo exhibition at Galerie Friese on the occasion of Berlin Art Week 2026. The exhibition ›Urform‹ features an installation of wooden sculptures extending across the gallery.

Claire de Santa Coloma's (b. 1983, Buenos Aires) practice revolves around materiality, space, and perception. Her point of departure is a found piece of wood, which the artist works by hand with as few interventions as possible. Each piece bears traces of its origin, and of the relationship between humans and their environment.

The organic sculptures recall stones smoothed by water, organs, eggs—archaic ›Urformen‹ (primordial forms), so familiar as if they had always existed. Forms that seem to precede the human hand, and yet require it in order to appear. At the same time, they stand in the tradition of Classical Modernism, particularly Brâncuși's iconic abstract formal language, whose pioneering, spatial arrangements de Santa Coloma also takes up in installative terms.