Lars Sarto Hempler
09 Oct 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
# Lars Sarto Hempler
### *Illusions never change into something real*
### **9 October–14 November 2026, opening 9 October, 5–7 pm**
***Formation Gallery presents *Illusions never change into something real*, a solo exhibition by Lars Sarto Hempler featuring new paintings, works on paper and sculptures.***
In the exhibition, Hempler takes the still life as both motif and structure, while loosening the genre from its traditional order. Vases, vessels and other recognisable forms serve as anchors within compositions in which motifs are simultaneously displaced, fragmented and transformed into something else. The viewer’s gaze moves between the familiar and the indeterminate, between what we see and what we think we see.
In the new paintings, the structure of the still life remains present, yet the motif gradually dissolves. Vases and vessels appear as relatively stable forms, while what they seem to contain expands into dense layers of colour, lines and fragments. Forms emerge as possible objects, only to recede again into the pictorial surface. The recognisable becomes a point of orientation, but never a final explanation.
The title *Illusions never change into something real* points to a paradox that runs throughout the exhibition. An illusion can be convincing and begin to function as though it were real, without ever becoming identical to what it represents. Hempler’s works revolve around precisely this space between reality and representation, and around vision as an active process. We are constantly creating connections, interpreting forms and trying to make fragments cohere.
At the same time, the works are distinctly physical. Paint, canvas, fabric, wood, paper, oil pastel, book covers and ceramics enter into a practice in which collage is not simply a technique, but a way of thinking through images and objects. Materials are removed from their familiar contexts and brought into new constellations, while traces of their former functions may still remain visible.
This is also evident in the exhibition’s new sculptures, in which Hempler works with book covers separated from the books they once enclosed. The cover, normally designed to protect and represent a content, remains as material: colour, surface, format and traces of use. The absence of the text becomes part of the work. Something familiar is still present, but its function and meaning have shifted.
This interest in transformation, fragmentation and translation takes on a particular resonance in a contemporary moment in which images, texts and cultural material increasingly circulate across media and as data. Without the exhibition being about artificial intelligence, the works open onto a related question: What happens when material is detached from its original context and begins to function as something new?
Across painting, drawing and sculpture, Hempler thus explores not only what we see, but how meaning is produced. The recognisable remains present throughout, yet never becomes stable. Something is transferred, something disappears, and something new emerges in the shift between the seen and the imagined.
**Lars Sarto Hempler** (b. 1978) graduated from The Jutland Art Academy in 2006 and lives and works in Aarhus, Denmark. His practice spans painting, drawing, collage, printmaking and sculpture, moving between figuration and abstraction, recognisability and displacement. In recent years, the still life has assumed a central position in his work as an art-historical form that can be dissolved, reorganised and invested with new meanings. Hempler has exhibited at galleries and museums in Denmark and internationally and is represented by Formation Gallery.
