Artists

Nschotschi Haslinger

Press release

For Berlin Art Week 2026, Mountains is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Nschotschi Haslinger (*1982, Eitorf bei Köln). Nschotschi Haslinger presents Centralia, a new body of work comprising ceramic floor and wall sculptures, coloured-pencil drawings, video, and performance. At the centre of the exhibition are hybrid bodies and creatures whose long, umbilical cord-like necks, elongated limbs, roots, and tentacular forms blur the boundaries between human, animal, plant, and landscape. They appear as beings in transformation – vulnerable yet alert, inhabiting a world that seems to have emerged into a new state. Haslinger’s sculptures and drawings unfold a fantastical visual universe in which bodies grow into their surroundings and landscapes take on the qualities of living organisms. Eggs, flowers, trees, subterranean spaces, rays of light, and cosmic formations recur throughout the works, creating an open and constantly transforming ecology. Particularly in the drawings, this world takes on a spiritual and distinctly feminine dimension: bodies are not fixed forms, but sites of metamorphosis, connection, and new possibility. Rather than depicting catastrophe, Haslinger approaches the fractured and crisis-ridden present through an imagined world beyond it. Her works can be understood as glimpses from a possible future – a future in which humanity has entered a different stage of its existence and in which new forms of relation between body, environment, and other living beings have become possible. Fantasy becomes a means of approaching reality from another direction: not by reproducing the world as it is, but by imagining what might come after it. The title Centralia refers to the almost abandoned town in Pennsylvania beneath which a coal seam has been burning since the 1960s. The virtually inextinguishable underground fire evokes landscapes permanently transformed by human intervention, as well as an Earth whose subterranean forces escape human control. At the same time, Centralia suggests a centre – a point of concentration where ecological, geological, bodily, and spiritual forces converge. The exhibition is complemented by a video and a performance featuring a tree-like wearable sculpture, temporarily activated by performers. Together, sculpture, drawing, moving image, and the human body form a shared spatial environment – one that oscillates between the earthly and the cosmic, the familiar and the imagined. Centralia marks Nschotschi Haslinger’s first comprehensive solo exhibition at Mountains, following her participation in the three-person show Hinter Deinem Schatten / Behind Your Shadow (Martina Kügler, Nschotschi Haslinger, Miriam Cahn) at the gallery in 2024. The artist studied with Walter Dahn, who passed away unexpectedly in November 2024; see also Nschotschi Haslinger's obituary in Texte zur Kunst. In this context, artist and gallery would like to draw attention to two additional exhibitions taking place in Berlin-Mitte – within walking distance of Mountains – as part of BERLIN ART WEEK 2026: the Walter Dahn survey Let’s Get Married, Let’s Get Lost at Sprüth Magers, and Hauntings by Carina Brandes at BQ. Artist Nschotschi Haslinger Nschotschi Haslinger was born near Cologne in 1982 and was a Meisterschüler of Professor Walter Dahn in Braunschweig. She works primarily in drawing and ceramics, as well as performance, audio, and installation. Haslinger lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions Her recent solo and duo exhibitions include Between Places (with Monika Michalko), Nizza, Berlin, 2025; Symptom Couverture, EXILE, Wien, 2024; Earthseed, Galerie Šachta, Prag, 2023; Mikro Silence, curated by Alexander Pütz, Moltkerei Werkstatt, Köln, 2023; Introesque, EXILE, Wien, 2019; Die untere Welt, Overbeckgesellschaft, Lübeck, 2019; Apropofola, Kunstverein Kjubh, Köln, 2018; Ruine des Antlitzes, Mönchehaus Museum für moderne Kunst, Goslar, 2010. Biennials etc. In 2018, Haslinger participated in Manifesta 12 in Palermo, as part of the project May the bridges I burn light the way, organized by Christian Siekmeier, EXILE. Group exhibitions Her recent group exhibitions include Klasse Walter Dahn, Trafik Projekte, Brühl, 2025; Das öde Haus, as part of Droste Festival 2024, Haus Rüschhaus / Center for Literature, Münster, 2024; Magisch depressives Badezimmer, EXILE, Berlin, 2024; Zero is the Moon, curated by Sophia Scherer, nova space an der Bauhaus Universität Weimar, 2024; The Garden, Galerie Norbert Arns, Köln, 2023; Return to Ceramics, Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakau, 2023; Gibt es den Mond wenn keiner hinsieht?, Galerie Thomas Rehbein, Köln, 2023; Breathing Water, Drinking Air, Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, 2022; Among Them, curated by Chantal Kaufmann, Galerie Kirchgasse, Steckborn, CH, 2020; Musée sentimental de l'ours de Berlin, curated by Jan Tappe, Bärenzwinger, Berlin, 2020; Junger Westen 2015, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Recklinghausen, 2015. Collections Works by Nschotschi Haslinger can be found in MOCAK, Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf Sammlung Oehmen National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody as well as numerous further private collections