REISE OHNE ENDE
Reise ohne Ende (Endless Journey) brings together works by Jens Einhorn that engage with existence, time, and transitions – with experiences and perceptions along a path through theimage, the world, and one’s own life.
Many of the works appear as snapshots of an ongoing process – states in which somethingis emerging or fading. Moving between abstraction and figuration, they open pictorial spacesthat are less fixed places than inner landscapes. Within them unfolds the experience of beingplaced into the world – into time, history, and social constellations: a heightened state of perceptionin which inside and outside, self and world, light and shadow interpenetrate. Perhaps apainting begins precisely there – in a moment when it is still unclear where it might lead.
Many of the works are shaped by biography. Einhorn grew up in East Germany during a periodof profound social transformation, surrounded by places in flux: industrial ruins, urban peripheries,and improvised in-between spaces where subcultural scenes emerged in the 1990s.
The work Wendekind refers to a generation raised in the transition between political and socialsystems. In an abstracted urban landscape – with echoes of prefabricated buildings and transitionalzones – a figure appears, both present and lost. It stands for a condition of in-betweenness:between familiar structures that are disappearing and new social narratives that have yetto take shape.
This experience of transition is reflected in Einhorn’s painterly process. Work rarely begins onan untouched canvas; instead, supports already bearing traces are used. Through layering,overpainting, removal, and collage, pictorial spaces emerge in which their own making remainsvisible – less a technique than a mode of thinking.
In the studio, torn-out pieces often remain – remnants of canvas, paint, and paper that laterreappear and reopen a work. At times, several paintings seem to form simultaneously – anddisappear again.
Abstraction can tip into figuration. Figures become landscapes, landscapes become signs.Meanings shift, roles change.
Alongside such appearances, animals recur, as do signs and cosmic formations. They functionless as illustrations than as a poetic presence within an open pictorial space – as counterpartsin which a different, more immediate mode of being becomes perceptible.
The title Endless Journey points to the processual character of the works: not a destination, butan ongoing movement – a journey through experience, memory, and imagination.
English version by Julia Colavita
REISE OHNE ENDE, April 30 - May 30, 2026, Paint Shop Berlin
