Tom Fecht has been nominated and shortlisted as a finalist of the prestigious Prix Pictet 2025, the world’s leading award for photography and sustainability. This year’s theme, STORM, explores both the power and fragility of our times—capturing forces of nature, societal upheavals, and moments of transformation.
The Prix Pictet 2025 exhibition is now open at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, presenting the work of twelve shortlisted artists. This showcase brings together photo artists from across the globe whose work illuminates the urgency and poetry of the theme.
The exhibition presents four works by Tom Fecht from his ongoing series Luciferines – Entre chien et loup (2015–2025).
ABYSS (Luciferine #2479), Unique C-print, 245 × 125 cm
RAGE I (Luciferine #2543X71), Homage to Dylan Thomas, Unique C-print, 245 × 125 cm
This series captures the rare phenomenon of natural bioluminescence, photographed on the wild Atlantic coast in Brittany. Luciferines are an endangered species of cold-water plankton threatened by rising ocean temperatures. The electric effects of these microscopic creatures occur when millions are exposed to molecular oxygen while reproducing at full moon on the turbulent surface of the stormy sea. The sublime traces of their electric discharge remain almost invisible to the naked eye and can only be captured entre chien et loup, a twilight moment when the first blue rays of daylight intersect with the remaining reflections of the moon.
In times of global warming, uncertainty, hesitation, and subconscious fear are mirrored in the blurred boundaries and shifting limits of liquid spaces. The coastline, however, remains a place of transformation and inconsistency. Like dying coral reefs, Luciferines point us towards an event horizon where an exhausted nature hits a dangerous point of no return. Yet in a world on fire, these marine creatures also lead us to the magic of their beauty.
LUCIFER’S VORTEX (Luciferine #2433), Unique C-print, 140 × 200 cm
MAELSTRÖM (Luciferine #3606), Unique C-print, 140 × 200 cm
EVENT HORIZON (Luciferine #2543X), Unique C-print, 180 × 250 cm
Fecht’s work is held and has been exhibited at corporate and private museums and collections internationally, including Documenta IX, Kassel (1992); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (1993); Hamburger Kunsthalle (1994); Nationalgalerie Berlin (1996); Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2001); MUCEM, Marseille (2003); Royal College of Art, London (2007); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2010); LAAC Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque (2014); Museum DKM, Duisburg (2017); New York Public Library (2019); and CERN, Geneva (2023). Fecht has taught at Cornell University, New York, at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College in London, and at ETH Zurich.
On the occasion of World Aids Day, Anne von Fallois (German AIDS Foundation) and artist Tom Fecht explore their collaborative project NAMES and STONES as a social sculpture (Denkraum: Namen und Steine 1992 – 2025). A major installation of this European Mémoire nomade is on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof since 1996.
First presented at Jan Hoet’s Documenta IX in 1992 as an homage to the creative community of artists who were among the first to go courageously public with their HIV infection, it successively expanded into over 40 permanent and temporary installations and finally transformed into a European network of local memorials for the victims of the Aids pandemic. Still active and expanding by annual additions of name-stones to public and museum installations over the past 33 years, these memorials anchored themselves in the urban fabric of social networks and contemporary mourning culture. Stemming from Land Art, this expansive epitaph is regarded today as the European equivalent to the American Quilt Memorial. Dealing with wounded love and death in a multi-layered work, theses installations continue to challenge our broader understanding of public health, universally rooted in body culture and embedded in inseparable social links to art and culture.
Accompanied by visuals, the artist talk will be moderated by Dr. Sven Beckstette, curator at the contemporary collection of the National Gallery.
HAMBURGER BAHNHOF
National Gallery Berlin
Invalidenstraße 50
10557 Berlin
Germany
THE GUEST ROOM
2 May – 7 December 2025
Dresdener Strasse 10 – 10999 Berlin
By appointment until 7 December 2025 at: theguestroom@artistspress.eu
The Guest Room is pleased to present its new exhibition featuring works by Rozbeh Asmani and Tom Fecht. Both artists invite for a reflection of nature as an open system of poetic signs, where color, light and form are governed by the principles of chance, often blurring the lines between the organic and the constructed, beauty and the proprietary. Thus, this exhibition delves into the tension between representation and abstraction.
For the Berlin Gallery Weekend 2025, both artists had the chance to present their signature series Colourmarks and Eclipse in the public realm by posting random combinations of 22 individual works on 50 Litfass advertising columns in the streets of Berlin. These installations will be visible from 30 April until 29 Mai in Berlin-Kreuzberg and selected city locations, sponsored by Nordplakat e.K. and Ilg Außenwerbung GmbH.
Incertitudes #4001. 125 x 210cm
Incertitudes #32001. 125 x 210cm
DeepTime / TiefenZeit – Tom Fecht
Permanent museum presentation including recent works
of the ECLIPSE and INCERTITUDES series
Museum DKM
Güntherstraße 13 – 15, 47051 Duisburg, Germany Contact Website
The DKM Foundation acquired a selection of 22 works by Tom Fecht now on permanent display as part of DKM’s contemporary museum collection. The English/German catalogue of the 2017 exhibition includes introductions by Siegfried Zielinski (ZKM) and Emma Nilsson, and an essay by Irmgard Benrieder (available at the museum shop)
THE DKM FOUNDATION in Duisburg, Germany acquired a selection of 8 large format works by Tom Fecht in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 the installation is on permanent display in DKM’s museum collection. An English/German catalogue includes a full documentation of Fecht’s solo show DEEP TIME (2017/2018) and an introduction by Siegfried Zielinski (ZKM) with texts by Irmgard Benrieder and and an essay Emma Nilsson; published in hardcover and available at the Museum.
Museum DKM
Güntherstraße 13 – 15, 47051 Duisburg, Germany Website
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY acquired a selection of TIDES for the library’s collection of photographic prints (2019)
NYPL – Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018, USA Website
THE MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS DE LIEGE acquired Finis Terrae, (Into the Open), 1997 for its new exhibition site La Boverie as part of their contemporary collection (2018).
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège
En Féronstrée 86, 4000 Liège, Belgium Website
Other museum collections with works by Tom Fecht include:
Neue National Galerie / Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (SMPK), Germany
Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Bonn, Germany
MuCEM – Museé National des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée Marseille, France
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
Museum DKM, Duisburg, Germany
Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen, Germany
Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Bonn, Germany
Leopold-Hoesch-Museum Düren, Germany
Recent photographic work and sculptures
organized by Emma Nilsson
11 September – 28 February 2025
Opening hours during Berlin Art Week 11 – 28 February 2025
Wednesday 5 – 9 pm, Thursday & Friday 3 – 8 pm
Saturday & Sunday 11am – 6pm.
Exhibition visits outside the Berlin Art Week by appointment only at theguestroom@artistspress.eu
THE GUEST ROOM
Dresdener Strasse 10 – 1st floor
10999 Berlin
Tom Fecht: ORLO and ORLO REVERSED in collaboration with Linda Karshan (Piezo-Pigment prints 74 x 54 cm each)
Permanent Collection of The Fondazione Comel, Pisa since 2024
27 September – 6 October 2024
FROM COMEL TO KARSHAN
Masterpieces from the Collection Comeliana
Curated by Giulia Martina Weston
INSTITUTIO SANTORIANA
Via Cardinale P. Maffi. 48
FONDAZIONE COMEL
56126 Pisa, Italy
10 – 14 May 2023
Somerset House
Strand, London WC2R 1LA / UK GALERIE PODGORNY-ROBINSON Contact Website
ARTISTS OF THE GALLERY
Group Show
16 May – 16 Juilliet 2023 GALERIE PODGORNY-ROBINSON Contact Website
LANDS END
Tom Fecht- Unique Vintage Prints
12 September June – 15 October 2023 GALERIE PODGORNY-ROBINSON
Place de Gaulle
06570 Saint Paul de Vence / France
T: +33 9 81 18 88 27
M: +33 6 71 27 65 60 Contact Website
GET TOGETHER
Group Show
13 Mars – 1 April 2023
BcmA Gallery
Manteuffelstr. 42
10997 Berlin Contact Website
Unique vintage prints by Tom Fecht
Curated by Hubertus von Amelunxen and Rudolf Zwirner
Grunewalder Exhibitions, Conversations and Concerts
20 November 2021 – 31 Mars 2022 Galerie Rudolf Zwirner
14103 Berlin, Germany
(By appointment only)
LUCIFER’s VORTEX / Back lit thermo-sublimation silk-print / dimmable LEDs on aluminium framing / 176 x 265 x 9 cm / Llimited Design-Edition of 3
LUCIFER’s VORTEX is currently on display at the THE GUEST ROOM Berlin until 28th February.
Entre Chien et Loup / Two Soundtracks 90 sec. each
In times of uncertainty Tom Fecht invited the musician Hubert Neidhart and the duo Transhuman Art Critics for a collaborative experiment to expand the luminous momentum of this work into a photo-acoustic installation.
Both soundtracks seem to reflect the accelerating uncertainty of our times as much as they mirror the unique circumstances in which the violence of this marine vortex has been photographed on the wild Atlantic coast in Brittany, France. The phenomenon was furtively captured at dawn “entre chien et loup”, a magic twilight moment when the first blue rays of daylight intersect with the remaining reflections of the full moon. Performed on the turbulent surface of the sea, nature’s romantic rendezvous remains invisible to the naked eye. Lasting just 90 seconds, the sublime traces can only be captured by a camera.
• HUBERT NEIDHART is a composer, musician and graphic designer based in Basel, Switzerland.
Video (mp4) :
• TRANSHUMAN ART CRITICS is an audio-visual performance duo co-founded by Emma Nilsson and former Kraftwerk musician Emil Schult. www.transhumanartcritics.com
Video (mp4) :
DeepTime
On Uncertainty – Hubertus von Amelunxen* and Tom Fecht in conversation
* Walter Benjamin Chair, Professor of Philosophy of Photography and Cultural Studies. President of The European Graduate School, Saas-Fee/Switzerland and Valletta/Malta.
2017 European Conference – Color Marketing Group
Valencia, Spain May 17-19
Expanded Lecture by Rozbeh Asmani and Tom Fecht
The expanded lecture investigates properties of color invisible to the naked human eye.
Black will be the point of departure to explore the invisible aspects of color embracing an unexpected fan of artistic and scientific points of view.
The expanded lecture investigates properties of color invisible to the naked human eye. The relationship of color control and power will be Rozbeh Asmani’s point of departure to explore the invisible aspects of color embracing an unexpected fan of artistic strategies interacting with economic, social and scientific points of view. But the invisible aspects of color will be simultaneously explored in very opposite directions. The lecturer’s discourse will expand into an unexpected dialogue without warning: From the monochrome depth and diversity of natures burning blackness towards the cool aesthetics of industrial color monopoly and corporate brand communication.
Black as a color includes a vast spectrum of contemporary shades combined with a high charge of cultural codes and transformative meanings. As a non-color black seems to share it’s profound magic with the unknown while giving a household name to astronomy’s black matters. There seems to be no accident, that the most recent scientific proof of existence for Dark Matter reanimated phantasies around the globe. This will be the context introducing DARK MATTERs by German photo-artist Tom Fecht. The umbrella term covers a recent body of marine night photography that investigates notions of color, time and space while reminding us that over 95% on the universe remains unknown Dark Matter. These minimalist works cross the line between the physical world and the invisible, magic part of our universe while pushing photography to the edge of quantum physics. Expanding the color-limits of the night became the artist’s photographic signature; exploring light beyond the visible spectrum created his photographic brand.
COLORMARKS by Iranian artist Rozbeh Asmani is the outcome of an on-going research into the field of color trademarks registered at the German Patent and Trademark Office. The silk screens and digital C-Prints explore a specific range of colors protected by trademark law in their respective fields of usage: The yellow- green color design of gas stations owned by an oil multinational as well as the brown van and overall of a global courier or the dark-blue round of a skin crème box. One glance is often enough to remind us not only of the very trademark, but also of our daily encounter with these products and services. Asmani’s work visualizes the impact of color monopoly on our collective memory when used exclusively by corporations as part of their brand identities. Confronted with the question what these colors stand for our attention is drawn towards industrial complexity linking color, power and memory.
The research of both artists spotlight the transformation of contemporary color skills in art and photography and stimulate an innovative perspective on color-mapping and invisible color ownership. But the usage of color and non-color in contemporary artistic practice is also part of a much larger global discourse raising profound questions, if any substantial difference between culture and nature can be further maintained.
Monika Haag / Mark Woodman (Ed.)
ARTISTs PRESS Basel Berlin Geneva, 2022
Bilingual English/German edition Hardcover 30 x 22 cm, 154 pages
114 color plates, ISBN 978-3-949990-99-1 € 39.80
Dirk Krämer and Klaus Maas (ed.): Tom Fecht at Museum DKM, Duisburg 2019.
Exhibition catalogue. Introductions by Siegfried Zielinski and Emma Nilsson.
Essay by Irmgard Bernrieder.
ISBN 978-3-942650-13-7 (German/English edition / hardcover)
Tom Fecht: Homage – Names and Stones, in: Michael Petry: The Word is Art
Mémoire nomade – Documenta IX, Kassel 1992
(by courtesy of Documenta Archive Kassel)
Thames & Hudson, London 2018
ISBN: 978-0-50-023966-7
With an essay by Hans Irrek and published by Laffanour Galerie DOWNTOWN, Paris 2015. Hardcover 80 pages 26.5 x 36 cm ISBN 978-2-9520349-4-4 (available at the gallery) Website
About the author: Hans Irrek is a German essayist and curator; he studied art history, aesthetics and philosophy. His publications on photography and art and design classics include essays on Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, Mikael Olsson, Isamu Noguchi, and Oscar Niemeyer. He is a member of the advisory board of the Photo Book Museum, Germany
“In everyday life, a SIGNATURE simply certifies the authenticity of a document or a work of art bearing the unique fingerprint of the artist and helps to identify his vision. But the origins of the term point us further to the SIGNS OF NATURE requiring knowledge about the NATURE OF SIGNS as reassembled in natural science. Here the potent simplicity of FixingNature becomes as challenging as its evolutionary matrix and spatial complexity. Nature as we see it, is a product of culture: as a matter of fact, nature, understood as a projection of human imagination, can be creatively manipulated and re-arranged. After all is it not a given, that any difference between nature and culture can no longer be maintained? Nature and culture seem to be the two extremities of an infinite Möbius loop where both sides are bound to become the very other. There might not be any clear traces left of the beginning – but quite certainly there is no end.
Tom Fecht: Mirror and Transformation
Contributing to: Flusseriana – An Intellectual Toolbox
Edited by Siegfried Zielinski and Peter Weibel
ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe and Univocal Publishing
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2015
ISBN 9-781937-561529 (English-German-Portuguese edition)
Tom Fecht: Refocusing the Euclidian Horizon (including illustrations from the night series Electric Cinema) in: The Cornell Journal of Architecture #9: Mathematics, Ithaca, New York 2014 pp. 4 – 16.
ISBN 978-0-9785061-2-4
Tom Fecht and Dietmar Kamper (ed.): Umzug ins Offene – Vier Versuche über den Raum
(Movement into the Open – Four Studies on Space). Springer Verlag Wien New York, 2000
ISBN 3-211-83476-1
Gisèle Freund photographiert von Tom Fecht
Museum der Dinge – Werkbundarchiv
Exhibition catalogue Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin 2001
Edition of 500 numbered copies
Tom Fecht – Namen und Steine, Mémoire Nomade. Edited by Ulrich Heide and Dietmar Kamper. Cologne 1993, Bonn 1998, Springer Verlag Wien New York, 2001
Other
Monika Haag/Mark Woodmann: The Blue Connection, Basel-Berlin-Geneva 2022
Marcus Loeber: Change, Hamburg 2022 (CD Cover)
Erwin Wortelkamp: Kunst trägt sich und uns, Köln 2021
Michael Petry: The Word is Art, London 2018
Hubert Neidhart: Sister Moon, Basel 2018 (CD Suite in 5 Faces)
Vivo A Beira, http://www.vivoabeira.org/, Paris/São Paulo 2/2017
Soundings, L. Karshan-C.Richardson, Satellite Berlin 5/2016
Crash, Paris 10/2015
Jean Atali Retour de Mer, Editions Dilecta, Paris 2014
Inventario, Milano 7/2014
Kunstforum International Vol 220 1/2013
GoGolobal Rural-Urban, London/Beijing 4/2012
selected views 12/11
Le Monde, Paris 6/11
Top Basel, 1/11
Ouest France, Rennes 7/10
Le Télégramme, Morlaix 7/10
FAZ, Frankfurt 10/09
Channel Thirteen, NYC 1/09
Les Conférences de Malaquais, Paris 10/08
The New York Times 9/08
Morgenbladet, Oslo 8/08
EQULIBRIUM, London 3/08
AXIS, Tokyo 10/07
Design, Beijing 6/07
Performance Research: On Beckett, Devon 3/07
Menschen, Bonn 1/07
O Globo, Rio de Janeiro 10/06
AXIS, Tokyo 10/06
The New York Times 8/06
Dialogue, Taiwan 3/06
new design, London 2/06
BLUEPRINT, London 1/06
Pure PSP, UK 1/06
Edge 1/06
Dialogue, Taiwan 12/05
DIE ZEIT, Hamburg 12/05
The Inquirer 11/05
Bladid, Iceland 11/05
BLUEPRINT, London 9/05
bob, Graz 1/05
UNIQUE PRINTS POLICY
Installation view of Eclipse #8090, 2013 and The Wave by Gustave Courbet, 1870
(Retour de Mer, Musée des Beaux Arts – LAAC, Dunkerque, France 2014)
Re-evaluating my work in 2012, I have decided to avoid the comfort of repetition. As of 2013 every new photograph is limited to one print so that each image remains as unique as the moment it captures. In addition I will retain one artist proof (AP/EA) for my own reference and/or exhibitions. Editions prior to 2013 will be either sold through or discontinued.
