by Lars Holdgate // July 21, 2026
This article is part of our feature topic Play.
To play is to experiment. It is the way in which children learn social and cultural codes and adults relieve themselves of them. In Umut Azad Akkel’s exhibition at Haus am Lützowplatz, ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ play is mobilized in a way that treads a line between familiarity and distance, inclusion and exclusion, intentionality and disorder.
Arresting my attention, ‘Child’s Play’ (2024) represents an innocent incomprehension that leaves me stuttering on the sculptures’ dimensions. I visualize how the meekish, powdery turquoise triangle shape might fit into the square holes of the larger rusted cube beside it, that despite its stocky nature cannot escape its own natural decay. Systems and societies are made up of building blocks, aren’t they? Despite their size, they seem like reductions of the brightly colored wooden blocks a toddler would play with and I ask myself: is it me who isn’t in proportion? Maybe when toddlers hammer playing blocks into the incorrectly shaped receptacles, it isn’t a misunderstanding of form. An inability to fit in doesn’t escape you as an adult, nor does a sense of play.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ 2026, curated by Ozan Ünlükoç at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
The exhibition solicits exploration. Across the different sections, self-referential elements pop up here and components or continuations of works appear there, pulling you around and blurring the lines between inside and outside. This creates a sense of familiarity within a universe I have just entered into. But soon the repetition associated with these all-encompassing narratives starts to disorient. It does so, it seems, intentionally. That seems to be the name of the game—the game that no longer has fixed boundaries.
This curatorial approach is reflected within the works themselves. ‘Grey Privacy Series’ is presented in a straight line across three bending walls and consists of photographic prints depicting empty bathroom stalls. The images appeal to their viewer, asking them to project their knowledge and experiences in an act of mental excavation, invigorating lifeless scenes. Beyond what these spaces represent, the effect of their depiction is one of placelessness, distance and anonymity, which, ironically, is manifested by the exposition of “private” spaces—spaces that encase entire universes but remain separate from the rest of the world.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ 2026, curated by Ozan Ünlükoç at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
Within the same room stands ‘Untitled Self Portrait 1,’ a glass vase that appears to have a crack in it, except the crack is not the result of an accident, it has been purposefully engraved. The vase is presented in a way that seems museal; the dark silky texture it lies on and the lighting above it attribute to it a sense of extreme value. Elsewhere, but not too far away, hang ‘Sketches of Untitled Self Portait I.’ A pencil drawing depicts the vase and its crack in measured detail. Its reproduction in the form of glass foregrounds a sense of intent. The moment of rupture is captured; it is no longer broken but fixed, as a state (of being).
In my own life, I tend to fall victim to repeating situations in my head again and again with an obsessive incredulity. It’s a process of remapping details in a series of events. To some extent, that is how I see the rips and cracks that are measured, formalized and reified. Damage almost becomes a scientific object that is researched with intensity and precision here, redefining it in the process.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ 2026, curated by Ozan Ünlükoç at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
What the exhibition does so well is its composition of meanings and narratives through the juxtaposition of works that may roughly be interpreted as “plan” and “execution.” Another example of this is ‘Wet Games’ (2024) and ‘Collage of Wet Games’ (2026). The latter series is composed of blueprints, handwritten poems, drawings, beer labels and photographs. Blueprints, which are otherwise the epitome of rigidity and objectivity, become subjective through these traces of experience.
Objectively, the form of these blueprints presupposes a particular type of functionality. In this context, Akkel redefines what functionality means and in turn, what its value is—the rules of the game have changed.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ 2026, curated by Ozan Ünlükoç at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
Similarly, etchings of layered and crossing staircases presented within Haus am Lützowplatz extend onto the green outside, where one can take many paths, but they don’t lead you where you think you might go. In fact, they don’t really lead you anywhere. Mobilizing this expectation of functionality in order to present it as non-functional is meaningful precisely because it exposes meanings as meaningless and that is, to me, the project of play. It feels like you’re on a journey, except you don’t know where or how to walk.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘The Path,’ 2021/26, Lützowplatz, im Kontext der Ausstellung, ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ kuratiert von Ozan Ünlükoç, im Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
As with the ‘Grey Privacy Series,’ ‘Wet Games’ feels familiar. It resembles an arcade machine and its brightly colored buttons invite you to interact. But what is presented as a game turns out to be an exercise in control—over another body. Three touches of the joystick and the artist’s body fits into the silhouette. The body is exterminated. The collages make it feel like a sacrificial act. They speak for the faceless person lying in a fetal position. Together we make the glass shatter in reverse.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner,’ 2026, curated by Ozan Ünlükoç at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel, photo by Göran Gnaudschun
I stand in different wooden boxes that feel like caskets. My gaze is directed upward. In one, broken glass is simulated and in another, it exists. Broken glass appears again and again. In the videowork ‘Tightrope Walker / Balance Game,’ the artist moves forwards and backwards carrying beer glasses on what looks like a set of scales or two metal trays connected by a long steel beam. Moving, the glasses fall and smash. Bodiless hands replace them and the cycle continues in what feels like a task fit for Sisyphus. Tiny, careful steps are matched by violent but inevitable crashing. It’s a wanton affair, as this birthing of crystals simultaneously bears with it a sense of danger. Maybe it’s at that point that play stops being playful.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Tightrope Walker,’ 2024, film still // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel
Finally, I play ‘Hide and Seek.’ Entering through a model of a snake gate that stands in front of an (in)famous club, I find myself in a black room that unfolds as a labyrinth. It is as if I have walked into a much larger version of the arcade machine I was in before or a character in a sci-fi film who just slipped dimensions. Garish LED screens strain my eyes as the artist reappears across this eerie labyrinth.
My only real company is the sound of subtle drumming to the rhythm of a heartbeat. I am followed and it’s difficult to ever get away. It is a one way game where only I can ever be the person who is found. The roles don’t reverse. What happened to the control I previously had over the artist’s body?
Akkel presents things not as they are—or, at least, not as they appear to be. What is presented as a game ends up not being one. The arcade machines, the game of hide and seek. The crack in the vase. Lightness and heaviness are inverted.
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Hide and Seek,’ 2026, film still // Copyright Umut Azad Akkel
Based on the Berlin references, the exhibition and the works are lodged in space and time: even the flyer takes inspiration from a VBB ticket. The show is made up of paths, mazes and directions, but it is difficult to know which way to go. I am guided by my imagination, thinking about where those stairs might lead, even though I know they cannot lead anywhere.
Many people experience Berlin as a kind of playground, where you can escape and be anonymous. But who are we hiding from? Maybe a game stops being a game when someone gets hurt and play stops being play when things get serious. Seriousness—in the form of exclusion and even loneliness—is revealed here as a boundary that brings the parameters of play into stark contrast.
Exhibition Info
Haus am Lützowplatz
Umut Azad Akkel: ‘Holding My Drink in the Corner’
Exhibition: June 13-Aug, 16, 2026
hal-berlin.de
Lützowpl. 9, 10785 Berlin, click here for map
