SVEN DRÜHL
F.N.J.–K.S.T.

KÖNIG GALERIE
ALEXANDRINENSTRASSE 118–121, 10969 BERLIN

14 NOVEMBER – 21 DECEMBER 2025

OPENING
13 NOVEMBER 2025 | 6 – 8 PM

KÖNIG GALERIE presents works by Berlin-based artist Sven Drühl, in collaboration with Hans Erni Museum Lucerne and Museum Wiesbaden. For over two decades, the artist has explored conceptual landscape art. The exhibition F.N.J.–K.S.T.—Drühl’s second with the gallery—features around 30 works, some on a large scale, primarily from 2018–2025, spanning three series: silicone paintings, lacquer paintings, and sculptures from the Dark series. Drühl studied art and mathematics in the 1990s, during the height of postmodern debates in the art world—a discourse that forms the foundation of his conceptual painting.With his distinctive visual language, Drühl questions how we perceive and reproduce the idea of nature. His landscapes—meticulously crafted yet openly artificial—remind us that our images of nature are increasingly shaped by screens, algorithms, and cultural memory rather than direct experience. In an age marked by ecological vulnerability and climate change, his paintings and sculptures offer quiet reflections on the landscapes we inherit, the ones we consume digitally, and those we might be losing. A common thread across Drühl’s work is the absence of narrative. His landscapes feel cool and distant. People never appear, yet their absence draws attention back to them. Drühl works in series, revisiting individual motifs over time—altering sections, shifting colors, or translating them into other media, including neon-lightworks.

Drühl’s practice is built upon reinterpretation: he samples historical artworks, digital renderings, and fragments of mathematical models to construct landscapes that feel familiar but resist exact location. Just as a DJ layers sounds from different eras, Drühl remixes forms and ideas. His lacquer series features hyper-real mountain ranges, volcanoes and seascapes. Painted from computer-generated vector graphics, these hyper-realistic works break from traditional plein air painting while evoking the same awe and longing as a distant mountain range.In contrast, the silicone series draws on the art-historical tradition of landscape painting. Drühl takes inspiration from artists ranging from the 19th century to today, translating their nature-based visions into distinctive silicone outlines in his unmistakable style. These works speak of the gap between nature as an ideal and nature as a mediated construct—filtered through culture, memory, and now the data streams of our screens.

© Images Roman März