About #
Karl von Orb is an artist based in Berlin, working with objects, images, and spatial situations drawn from familiar functional and cultural contexts. His practice does not illustrate concepts, but operates through subtle displacements in which existing structures remain intact while losing their self-evidence.
He studied German literature, philosophy, and medieval and modern history at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Training followed at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin and in classical atelier practice with Sadie J. Valeri.
Artist Statement #
I work with object-based constellations and images drawn from familiar, often banal systems of everyday use. These elements are not treated as readymades or symbols, but as carriers of specific functional, cultural, or procedural expectations. Through subtle displacements, substitutions, or re-orderings, they are brought into relations that remain formally plausible while becoming internally unstable.
The works often present themselves as controlled, neutral, or operational entities. They appear complete and self-contained, offering a surface of reliability and reassurance. At the same time, this apparent coherence begins to falter. Functions remain legible but no longer align with their context, producing quiet tensions between use, meaning, and material presence. Rather than negating function, the works expose moments in which it continues to operate under the wrong conditions.
Repetition, measure, seriality, and procedural constraint function as structuring principles. These frameworks initially suggest clarity and orientation, yet gradually reveal strain, vulnerability, or latent absurdity. What appears rational or harmless begins to tilt, not through rupture or spectacle, but through minimal shifts that allow internal contradictions to surface.
Humor plays a role in this process, not as irony or commentary, but as a by-product of precise misalignment. The works often oscillate between familiarity and unease, accessibility and threat. This ambiguity allows them to disarm without resolving themselves, remaining visually restrained while resisting stable classification or immediate interpretation.
While grounded in discrete objects, the practice increasingly unfolds in relation to space. Installations emerge as an extension of object-based thinking rather than as a separate genre. In these situations, spatial arrangements activate bodily presence, duration, and attention. Meaning is not assigned or illustrated, but arises through sustained encounter and the viewer’s negotiation of proximity, scale, and expectation.
Alongside realized works and installations, my practice includes speculative projects developed as renderings or proposals. These function as autonomous spatial propositions that test scale-dependent, site-specific, or institutionally contingent conditions. Across different formats, the work focuses on moments in which established structures remain intact yet lose their self-evidence, holding these conditions open rather than resolving them.
Presentations #
Studio-based and project-driven artistic practice