The Last Ferry – Wilfried Habrich

In a deep, glowing red, figures, tables, lights and signs condense into a space of many voices: The Last Ferry (oil on wood, 85 × 130 cm, 2025–2026), the major work that gives the exhibition its title. We seem to be looking at a night crossing, into a bar, onto a deck crowded with people. Yet, as so often with Wilfried Habrich, what exactly we are seeing remains open. The paint is applied thickly, almost built up. Yellow runs through the scene like light, while black lines hold the bustle together like scaffolding.

Such scaffolding is Habrich’s true subject. In his pictures, relationships between people are not depicted but played out, in imaginative constructions and mysterious machines whose purpose we sense but never quite decipher. The titles carry this game further. Sometimes they tell a story, sometimes they steer the imagination in an unexpected direction, as in the works shown during Berlin Art Week in September 2026: Abgestuftes Freitagsgefühl (Graduated Friday Feeling), Vom Maler verhinderte Dreiecksbeziehung (Love Triangle Prevented by the Painter), Die Dinge schauen vorwurfsvoll (Things Look On Reproachfully).

The Last Ferry brings together paintings and prints from recent years: large-format oil paintings, works on paper and collaged etchings, each sheet of which becomes a unique piece through the process itself. Together they reveal a pictorial language that stays true to itself while continually opening up.