Emmélie Lempert—dear empty apex

Textiles are an immediate medium for the transformation of the human body. Through them, appearance can be altered, estranged, or transposed into hybrid forms. Artists such as Meret Oppenheim and Dora Maar already demonstrated in the early twentieth century the potential of textile surfaces to oscillate between human and animal, animate and inanimate states. Costuming as artistic strategy—as an expression of role play, ritual, and social coding—is the threshold on which Emmélie Lempert operates. The German-Czech artist’s practice moves between sculpture, textile art, installation, and performance, sensitively tracing how material and form give rise to processes of embodiment, memory, and projection. Her solo exhibition at GOODBANK brings together five works that take this surreal, fluid figuration as their central motif. In the eponymous, ceiling-high installation 'dear empty apex', skin-toned and laundry-coloured fabrics are stretched between Lempert’s signature glass panes, encased in contrasting metal frames. Sewn fragments, detached limbs, errant seams—a bodysuit that loses its function and unfolds into a disembodied mesh, liberated from all normativity. Traces of use—stains, creases, wear—bear witness to previous contact, charging the textile objects with a psychological tension that slips into a corporeally absent, uncanny presence. With 'Ohne Titel (soft hold)', Lempert expands the space through a site-specific intervention: before the window, a torso is suspended, its arms curling inward like spider-like fingers. The ornamental symmetry evokes Corinthian capitals, while the gesture itself oscillates between protection and withdrawal. As philosopher Jasper Lohmar observes, playfulness remains essential to Lempert’s practice. In 'Ohne Titel (on the run)'—a rose-hued costume of hand-feet and a pale green hood—it emerges with ironic levity. One might detect atmospheric resonances with 1930s silhouette animations or the costume aesthetics of 1950s Czech New Wave cinema. Lempert absorbs their theatrical, at times absurd gestures without quoting them directly—the playful remains a restrained impulse. The uncanny and the humorous overlap, lingering as subtle tonalities within the work. Lempert interlaces past and present into a topography of social constraint and individual agency. Her hand-sewn textiles, with their unprocessed fabrics and delicate seams, recall the night garments of past centuries, while also making palpable the persistence of social normativity. The self-fashioned modification and costuming of the body remain, to a certain extent, bound by social orders. Through her graceful yet unsettling constellations, Lempert shifts these boundaries—cautiously, almost subconsciously. The surreal, sometimes animalistic forms become indicators of political freedom, fine sensors attuned to the fragile relation between individual and system. Emmélie Lempert (b. 1998 in Bonn) studied under Peter Piller at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she graduated as a master student. Her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (2025), Galerie Alex Serra (2025), Sotheby’s Cologne (2024), Museum Solingen (2024), and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2023). In 2025, Lempert received the NRW Award for Visual Arts, and is currently nominated for the Young Generation Art Award, initiated by Degussa and Monopol. She lives and works in Bonn and Berlin.