by Jesse Slater // Feb. 6, 2026
Downstairs, in the darkened basement of Capitain Petzel, a frantic monologue rattles from a disembodied mouth. “The brain!” Mouth yells, “…flickering away like mad…quick grab on…nothing there…on somewhere else…try somewhere else…” The words keep running, chasing one another, grasping to describe something always already out of reach. A shiny bubble of saliva gathers in the corner of the mouth.
‘Not I,’ 2026, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy of the artists and Capitain Petzel, photo by GRAYSC
Projected on the basement’s far wall, Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’ is the feverish consciousness of Capitain Petzel’s group exhibition of the same name. The video documents the play’s 1973 performance by Billie Whitelaw, who described it as an inescapable “inner scream.” This description resonates. Though the show is curated around the instability of memory, the works instead leave me thinking about the strange entrapment of being alive, and how our twitching inner monologues cope. “The buzzing?…yes…all the time the buzzing…dull roar like falls…and the beam…flickering on and off…,” Mouth says.
Mouth’s running commentary leaks into the rest of the gallery, stretching as far as the lacquered cardboard box sculptures by Gina Folly on the mezzanine floor. The boxes are precisely taped, perfect flowers pressed into their shiny surfaces. A punchy witticism that gives each work its title is written out in vinyl beside them. ‘It’s Twice as Messy’ is a long, narrow box presented directly on the floor, flowers clustered around one end. It reminds me of a coffin, only with its steady decay slowed by the lacquer. I strain my eyes to see if the flowers look real. In ‘Full Catharsis,’ a wall-mounted work, the cardboard box is flat-packed instead, flowers evenly spaced across the surface. The work’s slick of varnish is so thick I can see my reflection in it. I spot a tiny stray hair trapped on its surface. I think of the bubble of spit gathering at Mouth’s lips. A painting by William Gaucher titled ‘Sparrow’ is presented nearby, arcs of color capturing the bird’s wings flitting through different states of movement. The brushstrokes are raised from the canvas in places, a miniature revolt from being held on one plane. In both Gauchner’s and Folly’s works, lively twitching is caught somehow on their surfaces.
‘Not I,’ 2026, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy of the artists and Capitain Petzel, photo by GRAYSC
The twitching takes methodical form in Hanne Darboven’s installation ‘Hommage an meinen Vater.’ Arranged in a grid, Darboven presents framed sheets of squared graph paper bearing the measured sweeps of cursive handwriting. A numerical code tops each piece with the numbers written out repetitively in words beneath. I try to make sense of the codes, how they relate to the titular “father,” but they feel too intimate to grasp. They are, unmistakably, counting upward, with the word “heute” (German for “today”) crossed out over and over.
The work makes me think of control, boundaries, distance, allowance. Its uniformity feels compulsive, as if it were a container for some nebulous experience of grief, feelings given form through the structuring and observation of time passing instead. At intervals across the installation, the same image of a young boy posing with a dog is pasted into the grid.
‘Not I,’ 2026, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy of the artists and Capitain Petzel, photo by GRAYSC
Apparitions push through without constraint in Monika Sosnowska’s ‘Ghost’ works. Mangled cords of steel twist up from rough pieces of rock. An off-white fibreglass sheet is thrown over the top, looking like something you shouldn’t touch, something bad to breathe in, almost obscuring the gnarly metal beneath them. The ghosts are floating in the exhibition space, literally—awkwardly positioned between the door and the stairs. I have to career around them, working to avoid them, like something difficult to look at in the corner of your eye.
‘Not I,’ 2026, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy of the artists and Capitain Petzel, photo by GRAYSC
Across the rest of the ground floor, Martin Kippenberger’s ‘Jetzt geh ich in den Birkenwald, denn meine Pillen wirken bald’ presents the corresponding escape, into the recesses of substance use and nature. “Now I’m going to the birch forest, because my pills will soon take effect” vividly describes the installation; silver tree trunks propped up by metal stands, perfectly smoothed pills scattered across the floor. The escape feels false, combative in its idealization, fantasy rather than peace. Looking closer, intricate metal hooks that are delicate like jewellery hold each pill at the perfect slant. The destinations of inebriation seem to be represented by paintings positioned around the installation. Xie Lei’s ‘Temptation IV’ depicts a smudgy starlit assault, one body holding another to the ground. ‘City Boy – Trauma Image (from Australiana)’ by Mike Kelley is a psychedelic vision of a boy being bit by a bird. Escape isn’t so peaceful, afterall.
‘Not I,’ 2026, installation view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin // Courtesy of the artists and Capitain Petzel, photo by GRAYSC
Strategies for coping with the noise of being alive take form across ‘Not I,’ punctuated by Mouth’s yelps from the pit of the gallery. Tentative promises of relief offer themselves up in obstruction, order, repetition, escapism. “What she was…what?…who?…no!…she!…SHE!” However, the twitching is what occupies me most, the persistence of the self—the froth of saliva that can’t help but escape.
Exhibition Info
Capitain Petzel
Group Show: ‘Not I’
Exhibition: Jan. 9–Feb. 14, 2026
capitainpetzel.de
Karl-Marx-Allee 45, 10178 Berlin, click here for map
