It’ll make you feel better, 2022
Öl auf Platte Oil on board
40 x 30 cm

It was coming to an end, 2021
Öl auf Platte Oil on board
30 x 40 cm

Hidden within the folds of the fabric, the quiet hum of memories lingers, 2022
Öl auf Leinwand Oil on canvas
20 x 30 cm

tongue-tied, 2025
Öl auf Leinwand Oil on canvas
80 x 60 cm

These strings I’m in, 2024
Öl auf Leinwand Oil on canvas
60 x 50 cm

Ohne Titel Untitled, 2023
Sechs Zeichnungen auf Papier Six drawings on paper
29 x 42 cm

Never coming home, 2021
Öl auf Leinwand Oil on canvas
40 x 40 cm

Protocol, 2024
Öl auf Leinwand Oil on canvas
80 x 60 cm

Ohne Titel Untitled, 2023
Fünf Zeichnungen auf Papier Five drawings on paper
29 x 42 cm

I am not alone. You are always with me. I don’t know what’s worse, 2022
Oil on board
40 x 30 cm

It’s still happening, 2025
Oil on canvas
100 x 80 cm

Your heart is an empty room, 2021
Oil on board
40 x 30 cm

I want to be normal, 2021
Oil on board
30 x 21 cm

Nobody knows, 2021
Oil on board
25 x 30 cm

I want to be a baby again, 2023
Oil on board
45 x 30 cm

The visitant, 2024
Oil on canvas
50 x 40 cm

Twisted play, 2025
Oil on canvas
80 x 60 cm

Courtesy the artist

Franziska Krumbachner (b. 2002, Altötting, Germany) is currently studying at Offenbach University of Art and Design. She is a painter and drawer. In her oil paintings, she seeks to understand, process, and capture lived experiences in visual form.

Even as a young girl, Franziska Krumbachner drew constantly—as a kind of intimate diary and as a retreat into an inner world. She developed her skills as an autodidact and has continued to refine them over the years. Her motifs arise from dreams and memories that resurface like flashbacks of repressed experiences. Flickering emotions crystallise into images: rooms, narrow corridors, close-ups of body parts, and dysmorphic faces in black and white, folded hands. She always paints from the perspective of a cinematic point-of-view shot—that is, from the narrator’s gaze. As a result, her works carry a distinctly filmic quality.

Krumbachner has recently begun working with digital sketches developed on a tablet. She then freely recreates these compositions onto canvas. The resulting collages merge imagery from internal landscapes with found material sourced from the internet. As Krumbachner works exclusively with oil paints, which she applies to her canvases undiluted, she succeeds in creating highly transparent, delicate layers in which image planes blend into one another, evoking the photographic technique of double exposure.

We would like to let Franziska Krumbachner speak for herself. She describes her work in the following words: “I am an oil painter, and my art is much more than just a form of expression—it is my language, my anchor. My life has been shaped by trauma and mental illness, and painting is not just a passion for me, but a necessity. It helps me make the unspeakable visible and navigate a world that often feels overwhelming. I am deeply grateful to have found this path—a form of communication that goes beyond words and expresses what lives deep within me.”

Franziska Krumbachner (b. 2002, Altötting, DE) has been studying at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (DE) since 2022. She was admitted based on her outstanding artistic achievements. She focuses on experimental spatial concepts with Prof Heiner Blum and painting with Prof Gunter Reski.

In 2024, she won the Rundgangpreis of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main, awarded by Künstlerhilfe Frankfurt e. V., and received a Deutschlandstipendium.

Since 2020, Krumbachner has presented her works in various exhibitions, including at the Stadtgalerie Altötting (DE), in Burghausen (DE), at the Stadtgalerie in Bad Soden am Taunus (DE), and at Schloss Fasanerie in Fulda (DE).

Offering, 2025
PLA bioplastic, colour, synthetic hair
112 x 215 x 69 cm

Courtesy the artist

Sargon Khnu (b. 1991, Assyrian) is currently studying at Offenbach University of Art and Design and lives between Frankfurt and Berlin. He names Assyria as his place of origin—referring to the ancient region of Mesopotamia, where the traditions of the Akkadian and Sumerian civilisations were rooted. His work explores the relationship between sexual desire and power.

Khnu navigates the fluid boundary between seduction, desire, and vulnerability. For the exhibition And This is Us 2025, he has created a sculpture and bas-reliefs that engage with themes of submission and homoerotic tension. At the centre of his work are male figures portrayed in a state of preparation for a sexual act. Kneeling on the floor is a larger-than-life sculpture. The body is naked, exaggerated in form: the musculature is accentuated with a narrow wasp waist. The pose accentuates the figure’s rounded, prominent buttocks, with the testicles clearly visible. The face, obscured by long black hair, remains indiscernible. The body’s surface is smooth, flawless, and stark white.

Khnu digitally modelled the figure, 3D printed and assembled the several parts, then meticulously refined each part by hand using both organic and synthetic materials to create their immaculate finish.

Mounted on the wall are five wooden panels: digitally rendered drawings that have been CNC milled into lime wood as shallow reliefs and subsequently hand finished. These, too, depict idealised male bodies focused on rituals of preparation for physical intimacy with another person. One figure wears a large bow wrapped around the chest, as if presenting itself as a living gift.

Khnu’s aesthetic merges the anatomical stylisation of bodybuilders with what he describes as an “anime-Barbie aesthetic”, breaking away from conventional categories. He also draws inspiration from fashion and has previously designed accessories for the Paris-based fashion label Ottolinger.

Khnu’s work explores the body as a site of performance and the construction of identity—and, in parallel, desire as a non-heteronormative primal force. He cites as key references   by French theorist and LGBTQ pioneer Guy Hocquenghem, as well as Michel Foucault’s  . Khnu is interested in how sexuality shapes self-perception, social norms, and power structures within society. Concepts of identity, power, and symbolism underpin his practice, alongside the question of how human emotion and inner states can be made visible.

His work moves between the energetic poles of giving and receiving, and the tension between self-sacrifice and authority within systems of power.

Sargon Khnu (b. 1991, Assyrian) has been studying at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (DE) with Prof. Alexander Oppermann since 2018. He works with sculptures in both physical and digital forms addressing taboo topics and fostering dialogue on sexual minorities, gender, and the modification of the human body.

In 2019, he was awarded the Samsung Rundgangpreis für Bewegtbild und Digitale Medien. He has also received several scholarships, including the Deutschlandstipendium (2020, 2024) and the Hessen Abschlussförderung grant from the Ministry of Science and the Arts in Darmstadt (2022). He has exhibited at venues such as B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Haimney Gallery, Barcelona (ES), La Montgolfière, Paris (FR), Domicile Tokyo (JP), Spruce Gallery, Manila (PH), Gr_und Gallery, Berlin (DE), and Untitled Gallery, Berlin (DE). His work and interviews have been featured in numerous publications, including Harper’s Bazaar, Tunica Magazine, Metal Magazine, and Coeval Magazine.

Video, Performance

Various video files, 25 seconds each

Camera: Oskar Lohse

Performers: Nelly Habelt, Valentin Huwer

Courtesy the artist

Nelly Habelt (b. 2001, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is currently studying at Offenbach University of Art and Design. At the centre of her artistic practice is her own body. She describes her work as a visual representation of internal processes—thoughts, desires, and longings. Habelt develops performances in public spaces, carries them out, and documents them. For her, performance and video work exist on equal footing.

Her attention is particularly drawn to inconspicuous, hidden in-between spaces—often defined by brutal architectural structures. These environments become the stage for her interventions. Through her body, she makes contact with her surroundings, connects with them, and remains in complete stillness. Solely through the strength of her own body, she assumes a pose that appears like a frozen moment, so immobile and quiet it could be mistaken for a photograph. Her body seems suspended, weightless. A frozen instant in the midst of urban life, where her delicate form is held still while the city continues to pulse around her. As the camera rotates, the body is rendered as a sculptural form within space.

One of Habelt’s inspirations is parkour—the movement discipline through which traceurs reimagine the city with acrobatic gestures. In Habelt’s performances, the everyday flow is halted and transformed into a poetic moment. The motif of suspension, precarity, and the potential for falling seems to symbolise a broader emotional state. Habelt explains that dreams also play a role in her creative process—she searches for images that give form to moods and feelings. Her body leans into the hardness of the outside world, finding brief moments of support. The ugly becomes beautiful; the contrast between the harsh surroundings and her delicate yet powerful pose produces a rupture in perception. It is an image that draws its strength from contrast.

To preserve these ephemeral interventions in time, she documents them on video. For this, she works closely with cinematographer Oskar Lohse. Camera angles and composition convey the atmosphere while simultaneously transforming public spaces into film or theatrical settings.

According to Habelt, it is the dreamlike stillness of objects that inspires her, especially when chaos unfolds all around.

Nelly Habelt (*2001, Frankfurt am Main, DE) has been studying at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (DE) since 2023 under Prof. Heiner Blum with a focus on performance. By using urban space as a film and theater stage for her performative video works, she explores its perception in contrast to inner thoughts, desires, and longings.

Together with Len Oswald, she founded the atelier collective Tschatsch77 in September 2024. The collaborative project activates an abandoned industrial building in Offenbach am Main (DE), providing it as a workspace for art students. In March 2025, she will participate in the projection project Off World at the Diamant Museum of Urban Culture, Offenbach am Main (DE).