Carola Ernst
Im Quantensprung
Duration until 28.3.2026
Exhibition PDF with text, list of works and exhibition views
Exhibition view
As the ninth collaborative exhibition with Galerie Kai Erdmann, Im Quantensprung (In the Quantum Leap) brings together new works by the artist Carola Ernst (b. 1981). The exhibition title refers to a processual shift within a contemporary socio-technical upheaval—driven, for instance, by algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence—as well as to an internal movement and a re-evaluation of perception, material, and thought within the artist‘s own oeuvre.
Exhibition View
Carola Ernst‘s artistic approach is characterized by an affinity for mathematical and scientific modes of thought, understood as systems of ordering, experiencing, and shifting. Within an interdisciplinary conglomerate of visual stimuli—comprising music, video, installation, painting, drawing, sculpture, and assemblage—she creates so-called „psychogenic“ paintings and drawings that often achieve a holographic effect. Particular mention should be made of the series Axes of Psychophysics, featuring experimental „Vexierbilder“ (puzzle pictures), which was completed after fifteen years of work. Housed in a specially developed cabinet, these works form a retrospective point of departure; although they are not immediately present, they remain aesthetically tangible in archived form. As a continuation of Ernst‘s „Secretary“—a site of both research and filing—both objects mark a transition as much as a result. While in earlier psychogenic „drawing-paintings,“ the logic of the image was determined by mixed media, layering, and simultaneity, her current works follow a deliberate restriction and concentration of each individual medium. Ink, watercolor, oil pastel, charcoal, and graphite crayon are examined separately within media-specific groups of works. Amidst such a reduction of media, „Psychogenic Painting“ remains a constant, exploring the gesture itself in a rhythmic, analytical, organic, and technical manner.
psychedelic participation
Ink, oil pastel, acrylic, and watercolor wax pastel on canvas
56 x 51 cm artistframed · 2023
Ernst‘s works maintain a loose line of reference to Expressionist and Informel positions, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, while simultaneously opening themselves to literary movements of thought found in the work of Jon Fosse, negotiating repetition, silence, and shifts in narration and resonance alike. The title work of the exhibition, In a Quantum Leap (2026), features a piece of charcoal, barely the size of a fist, pierced from two sides by five nails. Charcoal, as a primordial material of creation and an organic, pre-industrial sediment, encounters the nail as a technical, man-made element. The object remains in a state of unresolved tension, a condition of „splitting apart“ (Auseinanderdividierung). A similar logic operates in the sculpture Superlumiar Monument (2025), an assemblage of found technical and organic materials that evokes imagination, fantasy, and inner imagery like relics of a past or future civilization. Likewise, a series of watercolor drawings with titles such as Little Symphony. Lascaux cave paintings (2026) or Dancing movement. Lascaux cave paintings (2026) refers to the simultaneity of the past and the present—viewing cave paintings as sites of supreme artistic production, or contemporary „caves“ as spaces of being, dancing, and music.
Exhibition View
Positioned between art and science, organic origin and technical construction, the exhibition In a Quantum Leap thus also addresses the act of art-making itself. Even in the caves of Lascaux, tools were utilized in collective, workshop-like gatherings. Carola Ernst carries this connection further into a contemporary state, in which fantasy, imagination, and visual stimuli are replaced, conceived, and renegotiated.
Rosa Windt
There was an eye in a bight / That traveled much faster than light / It departed one day, / In a relative way, / And arrived on the previous night
Mixed Media · 2009 – fongoing, Closed: 167 x 84 x 40 cm · open: Ddimension variable
Edition: 3 replica copies. The original remains in the artist‘s possession for life.This sculpture is an exclusive, constantly building archive of works. This will be updated annually for life. The replica copies will be adapted to the artist‘s original by the artist.
Galerie Berlin
Schweidnitzer Str 17
10709 Berlin
Opening hours:
Wed – Sat: 12 – 6 pm