Sascha Missfeldt: kleinkariert

kleinkariert was Berlin-based painter Sascha Missfeldt's first solo exhibition with Sugarlift: a large mural that immersed the gallery in color, with new small canvases hung on the walls around it. Missfeldt's work grows out of Berlin's street art scene, a tradition that took shape in the 1970s and 1980s and is bound up with the city's political and cultural history.

In German, kleinkariert (literally, small-checked) means petty, narrow-minded and lacking generosity. Missfeldt turns the word inside out. He lays down areas of color and overlays them with grids, small checks, misshapen circles, bars and wildly speckled dabs, and the play between movement and stability opens the idea up into something expansive. The installation mirrored his improvised way of working, built on spontaneity and intuition.

That lightness is the point. "For me, this kind of lightness is the best thing about painting," Missfeldt says. "I try to keep this freedom of mind, intuition, and freshness by painting emotionally and intuitively abstract with simple forms." The show opened on July 11, 2024.