ADVENTURE

From 25 September to 18 October 2026, Dietmar Brixy will once again open the doors of the old pumping station in Mannheim for his annual exhibition. Entitled ADVENTURE, this year’s presentation centres on his latest works from the WANDERLUST series. The guest artist is sculptor Jan Thomas, presented by Galerie Tammen, Berlin.

Opening hours
Friday, 2–7 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–4 pm

Unknown territory

ADVENTURE is about setting out into unknown territory. It does not understand adventure merely as a spectacular event, but as that particular moment when the familiar loses its certainty and something new is allowed to emerge. The exhibition leads into visual worlds situated between reality and imagination, orientation and openness, external landscape and inner experience.

In Dietmar Brixy’s new WANDERLUST works, mountain ranges, horizons and organic formations rise from multilayered fields of colour. Some appear light and almost weightless, while others emerge from the pictorial surface as powerful, relief-like structures. Landscape is not presented as an identifiable place. Instead, it becomes a projection space for memory, longing and transformation.

The paintings open up spaces that seem familiar without ever becoming fully recognisable. Paths begin to appear, only to dissolve again. Distance and proximity continually shift. Colour becomes movement, and material becomes landscape. In this way, Brixy creates places of longing that cannot be found on any map, but only take shape through the perception of the viewer.

 Wanderlust, 2026, oil on canvas, 180 x 240 cm

Creatures from a world not yet known

Jan Thomas’s sculptures encounter Brixy’s painterly landscapes like creatures from a world not yet known. His figures move between human and animal, myth and the present, humour and unease. They evoke medieval imagery, fantastical narratives and dreams without submitting to any single, clearly defined story. Beneath their often enigmatic or initially threatening appearance, an unexpected lightness repeatedly reveals itself.

Thomas’s sculptures do not tell finished stories. Instead, they create a space in which the viewer’s imagination begins to work. His hybrid creatures seem to contain multiple identities, hidden personalities and new possibilities of existence. The longer one spends with them, the more strongly they develop a presence of their own—and the more profoundly they transform the atmosphere of the space.

Pandämonium II, 2010/11, wood, height 203 cm

The dialogue between these two artistic positions creates an exhibition devoted to discovery. Brixy’s paintings open up the landscape, while Jan Thomas’s sculptures allow new creatures and narratives to emerge within it. ADVENTURE begins where certainties end—and where curiosity, imagination and the willingness to embrace the unknown take their place.

Exhibition dates
25 September to 18 October 2026

Opening hours
Friday, 2–7 pm
Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–4 pm

Venue
Altes Pumpwerk Mannheim
Marguerrestrasse 5
68199 Mannheim
Germany

Admission is free.