BERLIN.- On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Galerie Barbara Thumm is presenting “Profondeville,” the first solo exhibition by Berlin- based artist Thomas Zipp ( 1966, Heppenheim, Germany) at the gallery.

This exhibition marks a milestone in our ongoing collaboration with the artist and follows his participation in the group exhibition “Anti- Pop II,” which we co- curated and through which we first introduced Zipp’s work to our program.

Thomas Zipp, widely known for his intellectually demanding, multidisciplinary approach, has been a central figure in contemporary art in Germany and beyond since the late 1990 s. His oeuvre encompasses drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, consistently engaging with complex historical narratives, speculative knowledge systems, and psychological architectures.

In “ Profondeville,” Zipp unveils an impressive ensemble of works that deepens his engagement with the intertwined fields of memory, identity, and perception. The house— both as architectural structure and as metaphor— runs as a leitmotif throughout the exhibition: not only as psychological interior, but as a permeable space in which the boundaries of self, history, and consciousness become fluid. Echoing Freud’s observation that one is no longer master in one’s own house, Zipp’s spatial installations operate like cognitive maps: fragmented, unstable, and permeated by hidden forces.

The exhibition title “ Profondeville” refers to a small Belgian town that became known in the second half of the 20 th century for documented UFO sightings. Thomas Zipp has been engaging with these Belgian UFO sightings and their reflections for more than a decade. Here, the place name becomes a poetic resonance space, a symbolic threshold between visible and invisible worlds. This notion gains new urgency in light of recent, unexplained aerial phenomena traversing our Milky Way that elude astrophysical interpretation. In this context, “ Profondeville” refers to quantum states of superposition, in which multiple realities exist simultaneously until they are determined by observation. As long as their origin remains unmeasured, these phenomena appear as possible signs of extraterrestrial intelligence— a cosmic window for reimagining what is real, what is remembered, and what might yet be believed.

A motorcycle stands silent, bearing the license plate BN-952—white letters on black ground. Beside it rests a life-sized figure in a sleeping bag, human form in peaceful slumber, as if dreaming the space into being. The motorcycle’s code belongs to no known register, exists in no official system, yet precisely this openness transforms it into an invitation: a sign waiting to receive new meanings. The sleeping figure poses the essential question: Who determines what is real—the wakeful or the dreaming?

This contemplative constellation opens an investigation of a remarkable phenomenon: the systematic UFO sightings that illuminated Belgium’s Namur province between 1989 and 1991. Hundreds of witnesses shared an extraordinary experience— triangular lights dancing elegantly across the night sky. Yet the sleeping figure beside the motorcycle reminds us that the deepest insights often emerge in states between waking and dreaming: What do we choose to see? What do we receive when rational consciousness rests?

What the media dismissed as a marginal phenomenon reveals itself here as a laboratory of human consciousness. The Belgian UFO triangles did not emerge as objective phenomena, but as moments when people found themselves at the threshold between different levels of reality. The sleeping figure embodies this liminal state—a consciousness that chooses between dream and wakefulness, thereby opening new possibilities of perception.

The exhibition Profondeville celebrates this human capacity for conscious boundary expansion. The motorcycle represents the unknown; the resting figure embodies our capacity for receptive attention. Here, every moment of silence becomes an invitation: Can we expand consciousness? Can we make the boundaries between possible and impossible more permeable?

The pairing of motorcycle BN-952 and sleeping human figure embodies a profound insight: We need not always maintain vigilant control—sometimes the most valuable insights emerge in states of letting go, of trusting receptivity. The sleeping bag becomes not armor but membrane, not protection but interface with the unknown. Thus Profondeville unfolds as an archaeology of expanded perception— discovering that reality contains more dimensions than our daytime consciousness can grasp. The installation suggests: The unknown awaits our opening to other ways of seeing—ways that honor dreams and visions as equivalent sources of knowledge.

The sleeping figure invites us to consider: What if the most important encounters do not happen when we actively search, but when we are still enough to receive what seeks us?

In this light, even a silent motorcycle becomes a vessel of wonder, and the Belgian sky of 1989 reveals itself as a mirror of our own capacity for transformation.

Text: Sonne Johanson