![Daniel Hölzl, soft cycles, 2025 [mock-up]](/assets/_processed_/9/f/csm_Daniel-Hoelzl-soft-cycles-2025-mock-up_fa3cc584df.jpg "Daniel Hölzl, soft cycles, 2025 [mock-up]")
For the 50th anniversary of the Berlinische Galerie the artist Daniel Hölzl will mark the entrance of the museum with a temporary site-specific intervention. The inflatable volume measuring 800m³ will fill the void above the main entrance. The work “soft cycles” uses a transparent membrane to create a space where fragments of inflatable sculptures from earlier projects implemented by the artist at various places in Berlin are rearranged into one huge structure.
The object, made of recycled white parachute silk, absorbs and releases air at pre-defined intervals. This unbroken repetition is a reference to constant change: in the museum, where exhibits and exhibition architecture are regularly mounted and then dismantled; in the city, which is always evolving; and in all materials as they erode almost imperceptibly over time. As the installation switches from one phase to the next, the impression of bursting fullness gives way to one of apparent emptiness, and new forms emerge from the old. Watching the work is an experience like fast-forwarding the steady alteration of monumental structures.
Hölzl’s installation responds to the museum’s distinctive architecture and to the work “marked space – unmarked space” by the artist Fritz Balthaus, built in 2004 after a competition for art in the urban environment.
