Ersan Mondtag: Dispair

Ersan Mondtag works at the intersection of visual art, theater, opera, and film. His practice combines sculpture, installation, performance, and space into a unified visual language.

The focus is on the body as a vessel of memory. Biographies are inscribed in materials just as much as in gestures, postures, and architectural spaces. Mondtag’s works navigate the space between personal history and collective memory, exploring how social conditions become embedded in bodies, objects, and landscapes.

Dispair presents a new body of work by Mondtag, created specifically for the exhibition at Dittrich & Schlechtriem, which brings together large-scale sculptures made of carbonized wood and a series of reliefs made of wood and silicone. With these works, the artist continues his long-standing exploration of questions surrounding transience, desire, and collective memory. The starting point is a reflection, developed over an extended period, on the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion—focusing equally on forms of solidarity as well as on the fragility of communities and the dynamics of their internal and external boundaries.

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, September 9, as part of Berlin Art Week, and runs through October 31, 2026. The opening reception will take place on Thursday, September 10, from 6 to 10 p.m. as part of Gallery Night.

Runtime: Wed, 09/09/2026 to Sat, 31/10/2026

Takes place here:

• Dittrich & Schlechtriem