Thuja
Solo exhibition by Mathias Weinfurter at Palermo Galerie in Stuttgart
The thuja (Thuja occidentalis), also known in German as the “Abendländischer Lebensbaum” (Western arborvitae), is an evergreen conifer of the cypress family (Cupressaceae) native to North America.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, thuja has been widely used since the post-war period, and particularly since the 1970s, as an opaque boundary around gardens and properties. As it is wind-pollinated and produces no nectar, it has no ecological value for most native insects.
From 23 October to 28 November 2026, Palermo Galerie in Stuttgart presents the solo exhibition Thuja by Mathias Weinfurter. The title serves as a metaphor for a range of phenomena that shaped post-war West Germany and were characterised by optimism in progress and its accompanying effects: order, demarcation, and pragmatic solutions whose long-term consequences are becoming increasingly apparent today.
Within an architecture shaped by the so-called “economic miracle” and population growth, and reflecting an increasingly standardised urban aesthetic, fences, hedges, and façades not only structure space but also organise access, property, and participation.
The exhibition focuses on those moments in which social experience inscribes itself into the surface of the city and interrupts its rationalised order. At the same time, it points to the contradictions of a built environment whose promises of security, efficiency, and stability do not apply equally to everyone.
Weinfurter’s works understand these traces not as mere disruptions to a functioning infrastructure, but as material testimonies of social conflicts and processes of negotiation that inscribe themselves into urban space and continually transform it. The thuja thus becomes a symbol of an inconspicuous yet powerful spatial logic whose apparent self-evidence conceals social and ecological contradictions.
23 October – 28 November 2026
Opening: 22 October, 7:30 pm
Palermo Galerie, Bahnhofstr. 14–18, 70372 Stuttgart
Thuja
Solo exhibition by Mathias Weinfurter at Palermo Galerie in Stuttgart
The thuja (Thuja occidentalis), also known in German as the “Abendländischer Lebensbaum” (Western arborvitae), is an evergreen conifer of the cypress family (Cupressaceae) native to North America.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, thuja has been widely used since the post-war period, and particularly since the 1970s, as an opaque boundary around gardens and properties. As it is wind-pollinated and produces no nectar, it has no ecological value for most native insects.
From 23 October to 28 November 2026, Palermo Galerie in Stuttgart presents the solo exhibition Thuja by Mathias Weinfurter. The title serves as a metaphor for a range of phenomena that shaped post-war West Germany and were characterised by optimism in progress and its accompanying effects: order, demarcation, and pragmatic solutions whose long-term consequences are becoming increasingly apparent today.
Within an architecture shaped by the so-called “economic miracle” and population growth, and reflecting an increasingly standardised urban aesthetic, fences, hedges, and façades not only structure space but also organise access, property, and participation.
The exhibition focuses on those moments in which social experience inscribes itself into the surface of the city and interrupts its rationalised order. At the same time, it points to the contradictions of a built environment whose promises of security, efficiency, and stability do not apply equally to everyone.
Weinfurter’s works understand these traces not as mere disruptions to a functioning infrastructure, but as material testimonies of social conflicts and processes of negotiation that inscribe themselves into urban space and continually transform it. The thuja thus becomes a symbol of an inconspicuous yet powerful spatial logic whose apparent self-evidence conceals social and ecological contradictions.
23 October – 28 November 2026
Opening: 22 October, 7:30 pm
Palermo Galerie, Bahnhofstr. 14–18, 70372 Stuttgart