Ruttkowski;68

Wombat (lives and works in New York, US) presents her second solo exhibition, Rage Like a Blood Filled Egg, with Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. Wrath wound thru compulsive cycles of consumption and replication. Thorns tear apart and create the carcass ouroborus we´re imprisoned inside of. The lambs brey intrigue: a promise of a better world vs a perverse delusion. Innocence as a farce produced and consumed too by the vile worm. Contorted and knotted up in our foul pit we furiously devour seductive myth until we throw up: the disgusting expulsion of our own corrosive insides. We wonder what history has asked us all throughout time: Are hydra ever de/re generating heads, the ruthless brutality of capitalist imperialism on our decentralized resistances to oppression and alignments with life? Revolution repetition stagnation & on & on

Düsseldorf 2026/03/07 2026/04/24 Nadine Lohof (b. 1987 in Kassel, DE) presents her first solo exhibition Werkzeug with Ruttkowski;68 in Düsseldorf. As something that concentrates intention while remaining fundamentally ambivalent, tools can care for and injure, shape and damage; they inscribe marks, cut into surfaces, smear, and leave traces that cannot be fully undone. Lohoff’s paintings depict figures caught in transient situations: children, costumed bodies, ambiguous beings that evade fixed identity. Laughter recurs as a central motif, oscillating between warmth and aggression, intimacy and derision. Bared teeth, exaggerated gestures, and heightened expressions never settling into clarity. Soft pastel tones and gently worked surfaces lend the paintings an immediate, almost inviting quality, while subtle disruptions emerge on a closer look. The scenes remain fragmentary, allowing absence and implication to resonate as strongly as what is shown. The installation Alphatools casts axes in chocolate, translating the painterly exploration of trace, violence, and seduction into tangible form. Chocolate, both sensual and alluring, carries the promise of pleasure, yet it also exposes the persistence of marks: when one tries to wipe away a stain, the residue remains, hinting at mess, a touch, or bodily traces. Imprints linger, scents endure – and ideals of cleanliness and smoothness prove fragile. The exhibition explores the enduring presence of traces, showing how efforts to remove marks only reaffirm their persistence. In this sense, Werkzeug situates itself firmly in the present, addressing the tension between agency and exposure, and what continues to resonate beyond initial intention.

Ruttkowski;68 brings together three distinct artistic positions by the artists Carolin Eidner (b. 1984, DE), Ornela vorpsi (b. 1968, AL), and Robert Elfgen (b. 1972, DE), unfolding side by side within the gallery’s space in Bochum Eidner’s expansive installation explores the tension between structure and dissolution, using fire as a central motif that marks the ignition between geometry and amorphous form. Vorpsi, a painter, photographer, and writer, examines the complexities of human relationships through vivid portrayals of bodies in ambiguous, often surreal, spaces. Elfgen’s artistic practice is defined by contrasts, a strong awareness of materials, and a consistently sculptural approach to painting that blurs the boundaries between object and representation, light and surface. Seen in concert, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience diverse yet resonant approaches to form, perception, and transformation, uniting three distinct artistic voices in a compelling conversation across media.

Yoon Hyup (b. 1982 in Seoul, KR; works and lives in New York City, US) presents his first solo exhibition Quantize Off with Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. The works emerge from time spent moving through the city. Walking, skating, cycling the streets, fleeting impressions are collected and later resurfaced on the canvas. What appears is not a depiction of place, but a condensation of experience, in which memory and imagination remain closely entangled. The paintings develop from a loose underlying structure that allows intuition to guide the process. Lines and dots are applied by hand, advancing through repetition, hesitation, and subtle deviation. Rather than aiming for precision, the works retain traces of adjustment and chance. These slight misalignments give rise to a rhythm that feels measured yet alive, resisting the rigidity of pre-planned systems. Color functions as a carrier of sensation rather than description. It recalls fragments of light, atmosphere, and movement, translating intangible impressions into material presence. Landmarks and urban references appear not as symbols, but as sites shaped by personal time and individual perception. The city, in this context, is fluid and continuously reconfigured by those who move through it. Layers of Paris intersect with other lived cities, without settling into a single narrative. Quantize Off articulates an attitude of working within structure while remaining slightly out of sync, allowing each painting to maintain its own tempo and internal coherence.

Ruttkowski;68 is pleased to present 2025, a group show reflecting on the year 2025 in retrospection. The past year has been marked by intensity, movement, and transformation. 2025 unfolded as a year of reorientation — shaped by expansion, restructuring, and a series of beginnings that demanded clarity and conviction. Ruttkowski;68 entered a new phase, one that felt both challenging and affirming. At times overwhelming, this year asked for decisiveness in a moment when the art market itself stood on fragile ground. Rather than retreat, we chose focus. Out of necessity, a new strength emerged: a sharpened attention to sculptural practices, a deeper commitment to sustainability, and an emphasis on long-term relationships with artists, collaborators, and institutions. These shifts were not strategic gestures alone, but responses to lived conditions — ways of shaping continuity through uncertainty. New York brought a distinct sense of arrival. Together with new partners and a newly formed team, we began to feel at home in the city. In parallel, the opening of a new space in Bochum marked a deeply personal homecoming, reconnecting the gallery’s trajectory with the roots of the founder Nils Müller. This vibrant and dynamic journey is embodied by the exhibition 2025. It documents the multifaceted evolution not only of Ruttkowski;68 but also of the artists and highlights the 29 exhibitions realized throughout the year and is taking place at the spot where it all began, that shaped the R;68 DNA.

Ruttkowski;68 is pleased to present 2025, a group show reflecting on the year 2025 in retrospection. The past year has been marked by intensity, movement, and transformation. 2025 unfolded as a year of reorientation — shaped by expansion, restructuring, and a series of beginnings that demanded clarity and conviction. Ruttkowski;68 entered a new phase, one that felt both challenging and affirming. At times overwhelming, this year asked for decisiveness in a moment when the art market itself stood on fragile ground. Rather than retreat, we chose focus. Out of necessity, a new strength emerged: a sharpened attention to sculptural practices, a deeper commitment to sustainability, and an emphasis on long-term relationships with artists, collaborators, and institutions. These shifts were not strategic gestures alone, but responses to lived conditions — ways of shaping continuity through uncertainty. New York brought a distinct sense of arrival. Together with new partners and a newly formed team, we began to feel at home in the city. In parallel, the opening of a new space in Bochum marked a deeply personal homecoming, reconnecting the gallery’s trajectory with the roots of the founder Nils Müller. This vibrant and dynamic journey is embodied by the exhibition 2025. It documents the multifaceted evolution not only of Ruttkowski;68 but also of the artists and highlights the 29 exhibitions realized throughout the year and is taking place at the spot where it all began, that shaped the R;68 DNA.

New York 2026/02/21 2026/03/28 Joya Mukerjee Logue (b. 1976 in Springfield, Ohio) presents Your Presence Is Requested, her first solo exhibition in the US and her first exhibition with Ruttkowski;68. In Your Presence Is Requested, Joya Mukerjee Logue paints the hum of the social night—gatherings, glances, and fleeting exchanges that turn proximity into something magnetic. Her scenes glow with incandescent light and ambient noise. A cluster of friends mid-story. Soft clinks of ice against glass. Air thick with possibility. These are not grand events but charged moments, small theaters of attention and anticipation. This new body of work deepens Mukerjee Logue’s exploration of evening, with several works set at a monumental scale that invites the viewer into the scene. Across large canvases and diptychs, she pares her compositions to their essentials. Figures hover at the edge of clarity, held together by light more than line, as if the surrounding air were drawing them into being. Within that softened plane, a signature restrained palette and an economy of form anchor the work in atmosphere rather than anecdote, placing Mukerjee Logue in a lineage of painters who treat space as a psychological field, where color and distance quietly shape how bodies appear to one another making perception itself the subject. From this restraint emerges a clear priority: mood over narrative, presence over description. Edges soften. Attention slows. Social space widens. What unfolds is the quiet choreography of human interaction, the fragile circuits of connection that make social life feel both staged and alive. The paintings register the pleasure of being together, the memory of shared rooms and simple rituals that linger beyond the moment itself. Beneath that ease lies a tension between seeing and being seen, between noticing and being noticed. This ancient dance, rendered in paint, touches a deeper condition: the human need to belong, to be understood, to matter. Your Presence Is Requested is both an invitation and an appeal—to enter a shared moment and to remain present in it.

Scotty Ramon (b. 1984 in Cleveland, Ohio) presents his first-ever solo exhibition, Echoes of the Past, with Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. A little over a year ago, Ramon made his first painting. The large canvas is bathed in soothing pink, yet at its center is a small figure whose actions allude to self-sabotage. A stark image reduced to maximum expression. After that, his artistic impulse kicked into high gear, and the ideas poured out of him. A brilliant chromatic spectrum of canvases into which he inserted hyper-conscious manifestations of darkness. Max, his alter-ego dressed in baggy denim, is chased by gleeful demons or finds a red-eyed shadow looming large. Sometimes, Max is just a head; a smooth form rendered in brown as his simplified facial features depict how isolating it can be to confront one’s inner truths. Experimenting with biomorphic shapes or flat geometric configurations, he lays down these compositions with a synesthetic eye for visual vibration. In actuality, Ramon has possessed this innate ability all along. As a kid, he dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. Today, he has awakened that childlike creative freedom, only now it coexists with layers of lived experience. In his expanded practice as an artist, he riffs on the same juxtapositions of melancholy and happiness that define his music style. If not self-portraits, his paintings suggest the pursuit of an empowered self. Amidst the graphic warnings and unsettling words, Ramon nonetheless leaves the ultimate interpretation ambiguous—perhaps not “trapped” or “lost,” but emerging from a nightmare and traveling towards the light. Ramon, who is best known as Kid Cudi, also produced an original sound component that will play throughout the gallery. Atmospheric and electric, the score’s propulsive synths and beat enhance the experience and build the vibe.

Meuser (b. 1947 in Essen, DE) presents his second solo exhibition Hol die rein, sonst geh’n die ein! with Ruttkowski;68 in Düsseldorf. That’s how cultural heritage works! Because art made from scrap metal is not only an expression of creative puzzles, but also a powerful symbol of sustainability and transformation — turning old into new, industrial history into living culture, or poetically: wings to travel on. Sheet metal joins the power of fire and ash to dedicate an unvarnished monument to the rock-hard underground mining industry. Meuser’s works unfold their impact and aura with a natural heaviness of deconstruction inherent in the material, whose playful rearrangement catches the eye and gets under the skin with ease. Both the structure of the sculptures and the plea ‘Hol die rein, sonst geh’n die ein!’ emphasise the protection of art and the culture of the region. These works should not be protected from rust, corrosion or other environmental influences. On the contrary, they thrive on the irritation of the metal. What they need is a different kind of care or protection in order to be preserved for a long time. They need the eye, the observation, the love for the object that reflects life with coal and steel, not only as economic basis but also as identity-building elements of the Ruhr area. Hard work, tradition, but also change and transformation are the fundamental concepts for the Ruhr area and for Meuser. His way of ‘recycling’ the industrial past makes visible what ‘life’ means in the Ruhr. The physical and aesthetic side of this history lives on in his works. Excerpt from a text by Gregor Jansen

New York 2026/01/10 2026/02/14 Ruttkowski;68 and Wombat (b. unknown) are pleased to present FANTASY NIGHTMARE REALITY: waging onwards mental battle against treacherous images created by masters. “The only way to deal with a unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion” – Albert Camus What if you knew nothing about the author behind a work of art? Does that matter/should that matter? Where is the line between creative and creation drawn? Wombat’s work speaks for itself, though it is clearly rooted somewhere else. Paintings that are born of this world but not limited to the confines of it. Complex yet inviting, violent yet warm, works that leave a breadcrumb trail for future generations to know that this is life in 2026. Phrases such as “System of Suffering,” “Industrial Suicide,” and “Torture Within,” painted in stark black, white and various shades of grey suggest witness to a world on fire, a warning shot that this time we might have bitten off more than we can chew and, simply put, we are all gonna die…and what’s wrong with that? Death and despair are constant themes in Wombat’s work. Skulls, gas masks, smoke stacks, love making and drug taking. Celtic knots known for the representation of an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth frame the chaos in a connective tissue that spans through out all of Wombat’s work. Another reoccurring symbol is the ever-present White Dove, a messenger of hope and peace. Perhaps unexpected but greatly needed. In these turbulent times hope can feel like a luxury, but without it all is lost. Hope can produce and contribute and connect with others. Hope can make survival in an unfair world seem like worthy pursuit. Hope and negativity go hand in hand: black, white and various shades of grey.