STUTTGART.- What happens to the value of a work of art when its price falls every day?
A new exhibition by German photographer and light artist Laurenz Theinert will turn that question into a nine-day public experiment at Schacher – Raum für Kunst in Stuttgart.
Titled Obsolescence Programmée, the exhibition opens on Saturday, July 18, 2026, at 6 p.m. and continues through July 26. During the brief run, the price of every photograph in the gallery will be reduced by 10 percent each day.
The concept creates a tension familiar to anyone who has hesitated over a purchase: waiting makes the artwork more affordable, but it also increases the chance that someone else will buy it first.
Rather than presenting the value of art as something fixed, the exhibition allows prices to settle at the point where a visitor finally decides a work is worth acquiring. The result is part exhibition, part performance and part experiment in market psychology.
Theinert’s project is subtitled On the Disappearance of the Image and the Decline of Value. As works are sold and removed from the walls, the exhibition itself will gradually change. The initially dense, salon-style installation will become increasingly fragmented, leaving empty spaces where the most desirable photographs once hung.
Those gaps will become an important part of the experience. They will mark the choices made by earlier visitors while creating the uneasy feeling that the best opportunities may already have disappeared.
The commercial experiment also reflects Theinert’s broader artistic practice. His photographs do not concentrate on recognizable subjects or conventional narratives. Instead, they explore light, color, surfaces and subtle visual shifts.
The artist describes photography as a form of “painting with light.” His images draw attention to things that often escape immediate notice, including slight changes in color and seemingly neutral surfaces filled with unexpected variations.
Rather than treating photography as a transparent record of reality, Theinert emphasizes that every image is already an abstraction shaped by time, perception and material conditions.
Born in 1963, Theinert is also internationally known for his live light and media performances. His MIDI-based “Visual Piano” allows him to compose light in real time, often in collaboration with musicians. These performances create an improvised dialogue between sound, light and space and have been presented internationally.
Gallery owner Marko Schacher will begin the exhibition’s countdown at “9” during the opening on July 18. He will bring it to “0” with a closing address on Sunday, July 26, at 6 p.m.
The fate of any works still unsold at the end will remain undisclosed until the exhibition’s final evening.
Obsolescence Programmée will be visible around the clock through the gallery’s street-facing window. The gallery will be open daily from 2 to 7 p.m. at Blumenstraße 15 / Olgaeck in Stuttgart.
