Georg Dahled, Sofiia Yesakova, Vanitous Spectre at Nymphenburg Palace, Iron House, Munich

Some spaces seem to have forgotten they are buildings. Stepping into the Iron House at Nymphenburg feels like entering an echo: the glass absorbs and multiplies, the iron remembers and holds. And yet, nothing feels heavy. Everything floats. Here, “Vanitous Spectre” takes shape, not as an apparition but as interference: a flickering reflection, a displaced object, a detail stubbornly resisting interpretation. What do we truly see when we look at an installation? And what do we merely believe we’ve seen? In this ambiguous play between presence and dissolution, Dahled and Yesakova construct a dialogue that offers no answers, only deeper questions.

Inside this 19th-century greenhouse, now a diaphanous stage, the works of both artists move quietly, like seasoned actors in a wordless performance. Georg Dahled’s new pieces, created specifically for this exhibition, are laid out like geometric islands: three white standing tables, objects typically associated with conversation, become sterile altars. On their surfaces, black-and-white compositions rise like ruins of a never-existent order. Symmetry here is a cruel illusion: the eye searches for logic but finds only enigma. On one table, a triangular arrangement of small conical pieces references the game of Nim, in its so-called “Marienbad variant,” nodding to Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. But this is not about rules; Dahled seems far more intrigued by their failure. Then suddenly, a jolt: a single red lava lamp erupts into the monochrome, like a rogue note. Is it pop? Psychedelia? Or just a crack in the façade?

Sofiia Yesakova takes a different yet equally unsparing route. Her “Cargo 200” series infiltrates the space like a pain without name. The title, a military code for the transport of fallen soldiers, sets the tone. The surfaces she presents are cold, reflective, yet blurred. They don’t return our image, they return our uncertainty. In their refusal of figuration, they echo loss more powerfully than any narrative could. “Blind Zone” draws from the traditions of Orthodox iconography, but strips them of revelation: what remains is haze, digital sheen, anesthetized perception. Statistics become masks; tragedy turns into interface.

Her series “Ugly Scenes” mimics the language of the archive, grids, forms, classifications. The vertical rhythms recall Soviet memorials, but drained of pathos, hollowed out, like ghosts turned museum display. Black pigment erases detail, motifs vanish into dark silence. It’s mourning forced to hide its own grief.

But “Vanitous Spectre” is not about trauma or absence per se. It is a meditation on the precariousness of meaning, on the instability of vision itself. In the dense web of historical references and cinematic echoes, Dahled and Yesakova do not offer clarity, but elegant traps, slow-burning questions. The glass walls of the Iron House do not reflect; they amplify.

As we exited the exhibition, we caught a faint metallic scent, barely perceptible. Perhaps it came from the materials. Perhaps we imagined it. It reminded us of something distant, maybe from childhood: the smell of broken toys, or the silence that follows a question never asked. That’s why you must go. because “Vanitous Spectre” whispers what elsewhere no longer dares to be heard.