Water permeates the new body of works in this solo presentation by Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980, Paris). This essential yet often unseen force binds our reality: coursing through the air we breathe, shaping the contours of landscape, and wearing the fabric of our cities. Working at the intersection of human artefacts, urban geography, and psychology, Gaillard’s extraordinary cosmos gives new form to such phenomena as civilisational upheaval and geological time. Across photography, sculpture, film, video, collage, installation, and live performance, his work embraces a poetry of decay that rearranges history to shed new light on the present.

In “Wassermusik”, Gaillard attunes to water as an elemental force—passing through time and linking traces in collapsed histories. Through architectural interventions, film, sculpture, and archival materials, he modifies the Südgalerie with remnants such as 1930s exit signage, more recent furniture, a well-trodden basement carpet, revealing the strata of tenants who once inhabited the building. Among the most enduring non-human witnesses are the ammonite fossils on the marble floors, glimmering with splashes of water.

At the centre of the exhibition is Gaillard’s latest stereoscopic motion pictures Retinal Rivalry (2024), partially filmed in Munich and co-produced by Haus der Kunst. By harnessing cutting-edge technology to its full potential, Gaillard offers an expanded, sharpened and deeply affecting vision of the world around us. Seminal within his oeuvre, this landmark work redefines moving image as sculpture. It leads viewers on a journey through folded time and inaccessible urban surfaces: dumpsters and subterranean arteries, humid landscape, and views as seen through the eyes the Bavaria statue at Oktoberfest. In its sculptural and psychedelic space, the work disrupts conventional perception, dissolving a narrative to reveal pure vision.