Margaux Compte-Mergier - Discordant Atoms of Things: A Breathing Relief

Opening reception on Friday November 20, 2026 from 6 to 10 pm with a performance by Laura Eftychia Papachristos and Lea Grillis. On display November 20-29, 2026. “Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything [...] what we call chaos: a raw confused mass [...] discordant atoms of things.” — Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I. Drawing on the primordial chaos described by Ovid, Margaux Compte-Mergier creates a proliferating landscape in which the forms of the world seem caught in a continuous process of metamorphosis. Through silicone casting and assemblage, she brings together fragments of human and animal bodies, plants, and manufactured objects in a monumental bas-relief, somewhere between ancient friezes, Baroque exuberance, and science fiction. Arranged in a circular form spanning 8 metres in circumference, the relief unfolds without beginning or end. Within this shared material, different realms merge, temporalities overlap, and the boundaries between living and non-living, natural and artificial become increasingly porous. Part fossil, part emerging organism, the work seems to preserve the traces of a world that may be either coming into being or disappearing. Presented aboard Hošek Contemporary, a boat moored on Berlin's River Spree, the exhibition finds a particular resonance with the recurring motif of the flood in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Surrounded by water, the work inhabits a space of fluidity and instability, where the possibility of disappearance is inseparable from that of renewal. The gallery is located at Motor Ship HEIMATLAND Märkisches Ufer 1z 10 179 Berlin-Mitte +49 1525 7486496 www.hosekcontemporary.com