TRACE METALS. Eight Names, One Voice

A concrete block stands in front of the wall as if it had broken off a facade and been left here: wedge-shaped, about hip height, no plinth, with traces of mint green and pink paint, chipped edges and a rusted piece of metal embedded in it. It looks like the heaviest thing in "TRACE METALS", the group exhibition at galerie burster, a show that is all about surfaces that have come away.

Like Taiga Gallery, galerie burster is at Markgrafenstraße 68, in the same building, and the show has been on since 10 September. The room is white, the floor polished concrete, and a narrow opening leads into a second room lit by two fluorescent tubes mounted in a line directly on the ceiling. The hang makes use of that axis. A flat work as wide as the room, two small wall objects seen through the opening and the block on the floor line up one behind another, so you take in three materials at once before looking closely at any of them.

On the left hangs a square assemblage, a good metre and a half each way: white perforated metal over painted panels, fields of pink, moss green and cream, thin blue and mint lines, one diagonal cut edge. The perforated sheet lies over the paint like a grille, so parts of the painting can only be seen through an industrial surface. On the right a wall work runs across eight panels in two rows. The ground is beige, with pale blue brick grids, stencil and spray marks, fence patterns, thinly drawn outlines of vessels and figures, and passages of silvery foil. It reads like a wall stripped of several layers of posters, until the brickwork and old scribbles show through again.

In the corner two groups of material face off, and both shine in their own way, one with lacquer, the other with glaze. On one side are panels with a deep black, lacquer-like gloss, overlaid with a net of white-grey lines applied in ridges that run like cracks or weld seams. The edges are covered in crumpled metal foil that throws the light back in streaks. On the other are two branching wall objects, one glazed yellow with dark speckles and a shiny skin, the other matt and grey-brown. Both look damaged, in different ways. The panels show the crack in a flat surface, and the objects look like a snapped branch.

Together this makes a palette anyone who lives in a city will recognise: weathered cream, mint green, pink, rust brown and brick blue, set against hard black and silver. There is a shared method, too. The works cast, restack, strip and reapply. Even the drawn vessels on the panel wall look more like scribbles on a house front than depictions. The title speaks of trace metals. That fits, because the works treat their raw material as the residue of something that was once a facade, a hoarding or part of a building.

According to the invitation card, the participants are Clemens Behr, Marc Bijl, Bram Braam, Stephen Burke, Cosimo Casoni, Julia Eichler, Tabata von der Locht and Rutger de Vries. The curators are Bram Braam and Stephen Burke, two of the eight. The card reproduces Bram Braam's "Urban Modernism IV", 2025, concrete, oil stick, posters, spray paint and acrylic, 81 × 54 × 3cm.

The material is the best thing about this show. Palette and method are so consistent that the rooms feel of a piece, and the axis through the opening is cleverly built. That consistency has a downside, though. In the rooms the contributions draw so close that it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. Only in the corner of lacquer and glaze do the differences come into the open. In a show about residue without a sender you could take that as intended. For a group show it is a problem, because in the room you can hardly tell who made what.

"TRACE METALS" is at galerie burster, Markgrafenstraße 68, Berlin, until 24 October; open Thursday and Friday noon to 6pm, Saturday noon to 4pm, and by appointment.

Photographs: Florian Jäger, 13 September 2026.