ANNI MERTENS
SORT OF, NEARLY, SUDDENLY
17 SEPTEMBER - 17 OCTOBER 2026
The exhibition Sort of, Nearly, Suddenly presents recent works by Anni Mertens (*1995, LU) and marks her first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Things are rarely what they seem in Mertens’ work. Her sculptures appear soft, elastic and inflated, yet they are made from fired ceramics. Hard materials take on the appearance of something flexible, playful and slightly unpredictable. Her forms sag, squeeze and lean, seeming almost animated despite their stillness.
Throughout the show, the ceramic cylinder returns again and again, building a visual language that unfolds through space. Each appearance is an echo of the last, reinvented through scale, position and colour. The exaggerated compositions of the sculptures introduce a playful instability, with a nod toward Surrealist objects and soft sculpture. Sort of, Nearly, Suddenly asks us to look twice. What first appears familiar may not behave as expected.
Anni Mertens is a Luxembourgish artist based in Rotterdam. She studied Fine Arts at HKU Utrecht and completed an MFA in Ceramics and Glass at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. Her work has received several awards and grants and is held in collections including the Dutch Government, Villa Vauban and the Ministry of Culture Luxembourg.
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A cylinder, a box, a tube. Familiar shapes are stacked, turned, cut apart and pushed into new figurations. What normally serves as
support can suddenly become the sculpture itself. This question of what holds a sculpture upright has become an ongoing part of Mertens’ research.
Throughout the exhibition, the ceramic cylinder returns again and again. It has previously acted as a pedestal in Mertens’ work, and gradually became a form worth pursuing in its own right. Each appearance is an echo of the last, altered through scale, position and colour. Across these transformations, the sculptures acquire an unexpected physicality, some compressed, inflated or stretched, while remaining rock solid.
A ceramic form can sort of look like rubber, a crate can nearly become a building block. The humour lies in these small shifts, where something familiar is pushed just far enough to become slightly absurd. The sculptures hover between what we recognise and what we think we are seeing, while being fooled by the material and the ‘behaviour’ of the sculptures.
‘Dispatched’, a tower made from five ceramic crates, takes its form from the everyday storage and transport boxes found in an artist’s studio. Their familiar shape became the starting point for this architectural work. At first glance, it could almost seem as though the work has simply arrived and has yet to be unpacked. The ceramic crates, positioned on wheels, appear to be waiting for their next destination, caught somewhere between storage, transport and exhibition.
Colour and surface are integral to the construction of each work. Glazes range between matte and glossy finishes, with variations in saturation and texture. Rough and smooth surfaces, saturated colours and cool tones are placed against each other, creating a playful back and forth throughout the show. These contrasts allow colour and glaze to function almost like another material, influencing how the works are read and how they relate to one another across the space.
And then, suddenly, something changes. Suddenly takes shape in thick steel, its base compressed before rising into a rigid, vertical structure. Working with steel has been a long desire for Anni Mertens, to bend, twist and push the material towards its limits, until it can speak the same visual language as the ceramic sculptures. Here again, the pedestal becomes part of the sculpture itself.
After all, what holds a sculpture up is itself a question worth sculpting.