Meret Oppenheim 1913-1985
Jan 16th – Feb 14th, 2026
Opening:
January 16 | 6 – 9 pm
LEVY Berlin
To mark the fortieth anniversary of Meret Oppenheim’s death in November 2025, the LEVY Gallery is presenting an exhibition of selected works, complemented by works by other artists who enter into dialogue with Oppenheim and her oeuvre.
One focus of the exhibition is on Oppenheim’s edition works. Works such as Das Schulheft (The Schoolbook), Journal dans la forêt, Eichhörnchen (Squirrel) and the portfolio Steine (Stones) make it clear that serial processes were not a secondary medium for her, but an independent space for thought. Das Schulheft transforms an instrument of discipline and order into an open poetic structure. Journal dans la forêt combines the principle of the crossword puzzle with nature, memory and language, creating an image space without a fixed hierarchy in which meaning circulates rather than becoming fixed. In Eichhörnchen, too, the object shifts between symbol, animal form and surreal irritation.
Marcel Duchamp had already established the artwork as an idea that is actualised in different material manifestations with his readymades and editions. Oppenheim ties in with this thinking, but without its detached irony. For her, the multiple remains sensual and poetic. Etchings, lithographs and small bronzes are not neutral carriers of an idea, but places of transformation.
Even iconic motifs such as the fur cup undergo deliberate reformulations in the medium of multiples. Reproduction becomes part of the work, not its shadow. In Walter Benjamin’s sense, the question shifts from uniqueness to effectiveness, from the auratic object to cultural presence.