Mitte, Berlin
Gabriele Stötzer
Beginnen im Rinnen der Zeit
Loock"When I was in my mother's old house, which I plan to turn into a studio, I told the friends helping me that upstairs, where we had slept as children with a chamber pot at night, I wanted a toilet beside a wall-mounted washbasin, without a partition. They were astonished that I did not want any screen or barrier. To impress them, I bought a toilet bowl, painted it, and had it fired in a ceramicist's kiln. Disguised as an art object, it was accepted. Yet afterwards I began to wonder: where did my ease with a toilet bowl freely standing in a room come from? Then it came back to me: in the Stasi pre-trial detention cell in Erfurt, where I was held for five months in 1977 awaiting my trial, the toilet bowl stood beside the washbasin, table, and bed, and had to be used by everyone confined there. I then returned to my former cell in Erfurt and photographed a toilet beside the prison door." —Gabriele Stötzer, Recurring Knowledge, June 2026 Loock Galerie is delighted to present Beginnen im Rinnen der Zeit, an exhibition featuring work by Gabriele Stötzer. Through artistic acts of self-exploration and self-assertion, Stötzer is repeatedly confronting and resisting cultural, social, and political constraints. Her newest work schwungvoll in linien (2026), a painted Meissner porcelain toilette that addresses her time in Hoheneck, a women's prison in East Germany, is displayed in the heart of the gallery space. It is shown alongside drawings from the 1980s until today. Gabriele Stötzer (b. 1953 in Emleben, Thuringia) lives and works in Erfurt, Germany. The artist received the Pauli–Prize Bremen in 2024 and was awarded the renowned Kaiserring Goslar this year. Stötzer has had exhibitions at Muzem Susch, Switzerland; Kunststiftung DZ Bank, Frankfurt am Main; Berlin Biennale; Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden; Kunsthaus Erfurt; Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, USA; Phoenix Art Museum, USA; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Galerie Pankow, Berlin; National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania; Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Künste, Berlin; GfZK Leipzig; and Klassikstiftung Weimar. Works by Gabriele Stötzer belong to the following collections: Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin; Harvard Art Museums/Busch Reisinger Museum, Cambridge; Bundeskunstsammlung für zeitgenössischer Kunst; Kunsthalle Bremen; DZ Bank Kunststiftung, Frankfurt am Main; Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg; Staatliches Museum Schwerin; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Klassik Stiftung Weimar; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, Cottbus; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München; Sammlung Verbund, Vienna; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Hasso Plattner Foundation, Potsdam; and Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop.