The reception room of the Luxembourg Embassy in Berlin looks different than usual these days. Whiter. Emptier. Larger. More discreet. It resembles the spaciousness of an exhibition space in a gallery, with large display windows facing the wide Klingelhöferstraße, which runs through Berlin’s embassy quarter. The new look is also due to a fundamental change in the room’s classic design: the banners are missing, and the portrait of the Grand Ducal couple has been removed. "It was a challenge," says Ambassador Jean-Paul Ernest Senninger, "to transform our multifunctional room into a gallery. But Luc Wolff has succeeded in transforming this space."

The Luxembourgish artist Luc Wolff has lived and worked in Berlin since the late 1980s. Wolff's work includes site-specific, mostly temporary interventions in public space, architecture-related works and painting. Wolff became internationally known for his work “Magazzino” at the 1997 Venice Biennale as the official representative of Luxembourg.

In recent years, Wolff has been working on the idea of stripping room walls of their opacity by means of large-scale paintings, in an attempt to give them a new identity. In this context, he has created numerous series of works on paper as wallpapers. Characteristic of Luc Wolff's painting are rudimentary, organic-looking forms that are organised in comprehensive structures, often resembling a multi-layered, sometimes more, sometimes less translucent fabric. Wolff is less interested in the single, self-contained image than in the fusion of several similar images into larger units that give a new identity to the walls on which they spread. Room boundaries seem less rigid and impenetrable.

Wolff has explored the softening and the opening of hermetically sealed spatial boundaries in various ways in his work since the 1990s. By attempting to overcome the impermeability of sealing walls with expansive wall paintings, his cycle “Papiers Peints / Wallpapers” gives his own, contemporary expression to an ancient idea – one that the viewer is familiar with, not least in the context of medieval churches.

The Luxembourg Embassy is very pleased to offer an insight into the history of “Papiers Peints” with an exhibition at the Maison du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg. In addition to impressive groups of pictures with larger works on paper, there are also compilations of wonderful small-format watercolours, which the artist describes as studies for his large wall works.

During the opening ceremony, introductory words to the exhibition were given by Dr. Ute Tischler, art historian and head of the Department for Art, Culture and History in the Mitte district office of Berlin. She introduced visitors to the exhibition and highlighted Wolff's special technique for overcoming the imperseverance of walls.

Admission to the exhibition is free, but prior registration and free ticket reservation are required. The duration of the exhibition is from Friday, 31 May 2024 to Sunday, 23 June 2024.

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