Under the title Revier, Suburbia Contemporary presents a group exhibition with new works by Leonie Gemsjäger, Martin Galle and Robert Deutsch. At the center of the exhibition is the animal, not as an incidental motif but as a figure that carries meaning, as a projection surface for human imagination, and as a counterpart with existential presence.
The exhibition title Revier refers to a delimited territory, a space of belonging, defense and orientation. In the animal world, a territory marks a zone between protection and threat. Transposed into painting, it becomes the pictorial space in which identity, projection and relationships condense. Where animals appear, fields of tension emerge between proximity and distance, instinct and attribution, as well as between nature and cultural meaning.
The works of Martin Galle draw on the classical tradition of animal portraiture and translate it into a contemporary sensibility. His animals confront us with concentration and dignity, not as decorative elements but as autonomous presences. Through the focus on the individual animal, its cultural-historical dimension becomes visible: animals as symbols, as carriers of myths, religious motifs and social interpretations. At the same time, Galle emphasizes their natural fragility. Between iconization and sensitivity, a tension emerges that understands the animal both as a historically charged motif and as a living being.
Leonie Gemsjäger situates her works in a threshold space between reality and memory, between the visible and the invisible, between life and absence. Her paintings resist clear classification and open an emotional space in which the uncanny unfolds as atmosphere. Where what has been repressed rises to the surface, the familiar shifts into something unsettling: a comfortable, almost childlike world transforms into a zone of eeriness. Here animals appear as silent witnesses of inner states and mark thresholds between the psychological interior and external appearance.
The paintings of Robert Deutsch are characterized by an assertive use of color and by a visual language that incorporates elements of comics and translates them into free painting. In layered, sometimes exaggerated scenarios, animals function as symbolic actors. They mirror human drives, fears and power structures, as alter egos, masks or projection surfaces for social narratives and cultural conditioning. The work also carries a political dimension by visually condensing questions of identity, ideology and social staging. Here the animal becomes both a mirror of inner states and a commentary on social realities.
The exhibition title Revier refers to a delimited territory, a space of belonging, defense and orientation. In the animal world, a territory marks an existential zone between protection and threat. Transposed into painting, it becomes the pictorial space in which identity, projection and relationships condense. Where animals appear, fields of tension arise between proximity and distance, instinct and attribution, nature and cultural meaning.