Jan van Hal | Ludwig Kuffer | Tobias Becker
Compartment
20.02 – 10.04.2026

With Compartment, G10 brings together three artistic positions that deal in very different ways with contemporary visual habits as well as the composition of space and time. All three artists – Jan van Hal, Ludwig Kuffer and Tobias Becker – deal with an intensive formal analysis in which material and perspective are treated not only as creative tools, but as independent dimensions.

In his paintings, Jan van Hal explores aspects of function, form and construction. He designs geometric structures reminiscent of architectural drawings: his lines follow a precisely defined vanishing point, thereby creating perspective depth. On the two‑dimensional canvas, van Hal generates a visual space that both opens up for the viewer and remains identifiable as a constructed surface. Some works take on a real three-dimensionality: the paintings do not just hang flat on the wall, but reach into the room as foldable picture panels or box-like wall objects.
        In these objects the painted structures, with their muted colours, look like empty cabinets or shelf walls. Their monotonous order evokes various forms of documentation structures such as traditional archives and digital devices for data preservation through which knowledge is organized, conserved and updated.

Ludwig Kuffer presents in G10 multilayered wall objects that stem from an intensive analysis of the history of analytic and conceptual photography. He investigates the functions that photography assumes in science and technology. He encloses his exhibited works in specially made picture frames that recall drawers of plan cabinets as well as server racks. This framing refers to systems of storage, classification and scientific order. Within these cases, Kuffer displays his own photographs, as well as collages composed of archival materials, printed media and glass.
        The overlay of materials creates a subtle spatiality that can only be discovered upon close inspection. The deliberately chosen cool, objective aesthetic creates a seemingly scientific distance, creating a contrast between the apparatus‑generated image and the human‑sensory perception.

The video work The Discovery of Velocity by Tobias Becker in R15 carries these formal and media questions further and expands them with a temporally coherent narrative. Becker links different, partly historic photographic processes with algorithmic post‑photographic practice and assembles them into a video collage. In The Discovery of Velocity archival material, daguerreotypes, slides and AI‑generated images reconstruct the life of polar explorer John Franklin (1786–1847). At the same time, possible scenarios of his disappearance are imagined, since the end of his expedition could only be deduced from his shipwreck remains. In textual accounts, Franklin appears as a person who perceived his environment slowly yet with extreme differentiation.
        This contemplative way of life creates a contrast to the the heterogeneous image media used in the video. Against this background, the video asks how media and technological progress shape and shift our understanding of reality. Will the increasing densification and acceleration of experiential worlds ultimately lead to a form of collective perceptual blindness?


Jan van Hal (*1999 in Darmstadt) has been studying at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach since 2023. His works have been shown at the Toxic Arts Gallery in London (2025), at the Kunsthalle Offenbach (2025) and at Vinzenz in Vienna (2025).

Ludwig Kuffer (*1991 in Schwäbisch Hall) completed his degree in Free Art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2023. Previously he studied Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Hamburg and Photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. His works have been presented in several exhibitions, including Neu Cöln in Cologne (2025), the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen (2024), the Museum Folkwang in Essen (2021), the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum (2019) and the F‑Stop Festival in Leipzig (2018).

Tobias Becker (*1991) studied time‑based media at the Kunsthochschule Mainz and at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen until 2019. He received a project scholarship from the Artist Residency Balmoral in 2023 and the Emy‑Roeder Prize of the state of Rhineland‑Palatinate in 2020. His works have been shown nationally and internationally, among others at the Haus der Stadtgeschichte Offenbach (2025), the Museum Wiesbaden (2025), the Eunam Museum of Art in South Korea (2023), the Fotomuseum Winterthur (2019), the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen (2017), the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück (2019) and the analogueNow! Photofestival in Berlin (2023).

Text: Carolina Maddè
Photography: Nils Heck
Edit: Janosch Boerckel 
Graphics: dito.typo