Visite Privée: Art Gallery Visit Series
February 12th, 2026 @ Thaddaeus Ropac
Columbia alumni were welcomed to the Tom Sachs & Martha Jungwirth show by Elena Bortolotti, gallery director at Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris.
Tom Sachs (b. 1966, New York) is an American artist known for his distinctive practice that combines sculpture, installation, and performance, often drawing from popular culture, design, and technology. Working primarily with everyday materials such as plywood, duct tape, cardboard, and found objects, Sachs embraces a deliberately handmade, improvised aesthetic that foregrounds process, labor, and imperfection. His work frequently references icons of modernity—from NASA and space exploration to luxury brands and architecture—recontextualizing them through a critical yet playful lens.
Martha Jungwirth (b. 1940, Vienna) is an Austrian painter whose work has occupied a distinctive place in contemporary art since the 1960s. Trained at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she later taught, she was a founding member of the Viennese artist group Wirklichkeiten and gained early international visibility, notably through her participation in documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. Jungwirth’s painting moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, characterized by an intuitive, gestural language that often draws from memory, landscape, and lived experience.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
“A Good Shelf”(Volume II) by Tom Sachs marries his signature bricolage sculpture techniques with the ceramic practice he began in 2012. Featuring a selection of the New York based artist’s hand-formed ceramics, displayed on singular shelves built from found materials, the exhibition continues
Sachs’ exploration of themes of ritual and process. The ceramics on view can be used as mezcal copitas or cortado cups, cereal or soup bowls, but their ancient, versatile form originates from the East Asian tea bowl, or chawan.
Geh nicht aus dem Zimmer (Don’t leave your room) by Martha Jungwirth, manifests a diaristic introspection. It refers to a poem by Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky that bears no title but is known by these opening words. Impassioned yet obstinate, it implores the reader: ‘Don’t leave your room. Pretend a cold in the head. / What could be more exciting than wallpaper, chair and bed?’ It relates directly to the private and deeply personal process behind the 131 intimate works on paper that make up the large-scale installation at the heart of the exhibition, many of which Jungwirth made at twilight in front of the television. More than 30 years after their creation, Jungwirth has assembled them into a single composite artwork in order to confront herself once again with the transient impulses that generated them.
TOM SACHS
Step Up to the Line, 2025.
English porcelain, plywood, epoxy resin, latex, aluminium and hardware.
38.1 × 36.2 × 24.8 cm
MARTHA JUNGWIRTH
Untitled, 2025.
Oil on paper on canvas.
242 × 340.6 cm
ABOUT THE SERIES
Each visit includes a guided tour led by an artist, curator, or gallerist, followed by an engaging discussion at a Paris art gallery or artist atelier. It provides a unique opportunity for alumni, artists and galleries to connect, fostering meaningful relationships around the world of contemporary art.
Posted by Victor Schaub Wong ’91 GSAPP