Rolf Sachs’ largest exhibition to date, ‘Be-rühren’, is a playful study of touch

Kunsthalle Schweinfurt in Germany is presenting a new exhibition, ‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’, opening this Saturday, July 18, and running through October 5 2025.

This will be the most comprehensive retrospective to date of the Swiss artist and designer Rolf Sachs. Showcasing over 150 works spanning from the 1990s to the present day, the exhibition encompasses sculpture, photography, painting and design. ‘Be-rühren’ is German for ‘touch’, and evokes both Sachs’ exploration of sensory perception and his interest in the human condition.

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’: a multidisciplinary survey

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ surveys his entire career, organised thematically around bodies of work. These explore the motifs that define the artist’s practice: a poetic sensibility, an empathetic perspective and a playful reimagining of domestic objects. The latter, in particular, is a central theme, as Sachs seeks to transform ordinary materials into works imbued with wit, emotion and tactility, encouraging both sensory and emotional engagement.

Reimagining the everyday

A dedicated gallery is given to Sachs’ reinterpretation of domestic objects, including sculptures – which often draw on the artist’s Swiss Alpine heritage (he was born in Lausanne, but is now based in Rome) – that recontextualise mundane items. This is felt in Heu, Ross, Wolle and Mist, monumental vitrines filled with natural materials such as hay, manure, wool and horsehair, and Bodenständigkeit, a pine branch cast in bronze.

Blurring boundaries through photography

Sachs’ photography also features prominently, where the artist uses long exposures and flash techniques for spectral, abstract results. In Camera in Motion, inspired by the Swiss landscape, Sachs employs experimental photography to depict a journey along the Albula railway line – the images caught between abstraction and reality. Meanwhile, series like Moving Stills and Shadows transform everyday objects such as toilet paper and spaghetti into ambiguous forms.

Modular design, reconfigured

Another highlight is the presentation of Sachs’ modular furniture series ‘p-arts + fun c'tion’, shown for the first time in over 30 years. This collection of chairs, armchairs and desks is constructed without nails or screws, instead relying on gravity and intelligent design. Its modularity allows for limitless reconfigurations. Notable pieces include the Attraction bed, which fuses cold steel with warm wood to symbolise the emotional connection between its inhabitants, and the Horgenglarus chair, which Sachs has been reinterpreting since 1992 in new materials such silicone, slate, wax, felt and resin.

A new chapter

While ‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ is a retrospective, it also introduces a new chapter in the artist’s career. A grand hall at Kunsthalle Schweinfurt is dedicated to his latest paintings and drawings – a focus since 2020, inspired by his relocation to Rome. Series such as Can Paintings, Défroissage and Touchée blend abstraction and figuration, with the latter created using Sachs’ fingers rather than a brush.

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ is an immersion into the artist’s exploration of abstraction and meaning, underscoring not only the breadth of his practice, but its continuing evolution.