In the Berlin sky, a translucent form pulsates above the entrance to the Berlinische Galerie. This inflatable sculpture, measuring 800 cubic meters, is titled Soft Cycles, is the work of Daniel Hölzl, an Austrian artist based in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Once a hotbed of East Berlin's counterculture, this district of the German capital—now gentrified but without abandoning its taste for the experimental—constitutes the fertile ground for Hölzl's artistic research. It is in this environment, amidst rehabilitated squats, architectural collectives, and circular design workshops, that the artist develops a practice that combines slow temporalities and sensitive materials.
Designed for the 50e To mark the museum's anniversary, the installation occupies the architectural void above the vestibule, breathing new life into an often neglected space. Soft Cycles It is made up of fragments of Hölzl's earlier inflatable works, assembled into a single structure. The choice to reuse existing membranes reveals a strong ethic: no new monumentality, but recycled forms, carrying memories and past gestures.
Made from downgraded parachute silk, an ultra-resistant yet ethereally lightweight material, the transparent membrane absorbs and releases air at regular intervals. This respiratory system, powered by a silent, adaptive blower, creates an organic rhythm that brings the artwork into the realm of the living. The installation then becomes a presence: it is no longer an object to contemplate, but a body with which to coexist.
Creation Soft Cycles dialogue with marked space – unmarked space Fritz Balthaus's 2004 work traces the foundations of a vanished building on the ground in the museum square. While Balthaus emphasizes absence, Hölzl fills the void, not to fill it, but to reveal its permeability. It's a play of correspondences: the mineral memory of the one, the breathing memory of the other.
Daniel Hölzl graduated from the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, where he studied spatial design and environmental sculpture. His work draws as much from artisanal practices as from flexible engineering. He uses industrial sewing techniques, CAD (computer-aided design) patterns, and parametric modeling to anticipate structural deformations. The deliberately visible seams become a distinct artistic motif in their own right.
Berlin, a city in perpetual flux, serves as the ideal backdrop for this work. Its fragmented urbanism, its interstices and fertile voids are reflected in Hölzl's oeuvre. One thinks of the wastelands of Tempelhofer Feld, the logistical utopias of collectives like Raumlabor, or makeshift shelters transformed into art spaces. Here, the city is not a collection of buildings: it is an ecology of flows, losses, and transmissions.
In this soft, shifting structure, one can also perceive the legacy of Gordon Matta-Clark, with his anarchic cuts in rigid architecture, or of Tatiana Bilbao and her open designs. Daniel Hölzl's work, however, takes a more organic turn. The material is not merely porous; it is permeable to the other, to the visitor, to the climate. The ambient air becomes part of the scenography.
With Soft CyclesHölzl doesn't envision a utopian future; he proposes a breath of fresh air. He moves away from the dogma of sustainability as persistence, making it a question of cycles and metamorphosis. He reminds us that building can also mean bending, dismantling, and repurposing.
On display until September 29, 2025 at the Berlinische Galerie, Soft Cycles It is an experience to be lived slowly, like approaching a breath. It is a fleeting architecture, like mist that traces on a window the ephemeral image of a changing world.
Soft Cycles
Berlinische Galerie
Alte Jakobstraße 124-128, Berlin (Germany)
Until September 29, 2025
