Alina Rentsch lives and works in Berlin. Her work examines spatial expectation and the scripts that shape orientation, display, and movement. Through staging and rearranging spaces, she works with the social and economic codings embedded in these structures, drawing on the logics of advertising and signage to produce situations that guide perception without becoming fully explicit. She holds a BFA from Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin, and an MFA from Konstfack, Stockholm; she is represented by Petrine, Paris/Düsseldorf.

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Booth, 2025
Frieze, London (with Petrine)
PF400 Velour, 580 x 430 cm
LED panel, vinyl film, 200 x 60 x 15 cm

Booth transforms the corner space at Frieze London into a site of distortion and shifting perspectives. A printed carpet creates an anamorphic illusion of an imagined sub-level that resolves only from one precise point of view. Above, a single lamp voices an excerpt from her fair proposal, turning the booth into both a commercial metric and an image-producing device. Drawing on seventeenth-century perspective boxes, economic thresholds, and the shifting position of the viewer, Booth moves between image and infrastructure, illusion and document.

The presentation is accompanied by A Private Life, a text by Angharad Williams, adapted for the fair from her 2021 piece The Last Testament and Will of Me. 

Fear not, dear shopper, for there's a way, 2024
Linienstraße, Düsseldorf
invited by Franca Zitta
Installation, various materials

The exhibition unfolds across three successive rooms, evoking a dramaturgy akin to a three-act play. Once a grocery store, the space reimagines visitors as shoppers, moving through a staged experience. In the first act, visitors encounter heat maps – tools typically used to evaluate customer behavior in commercial environments. The second act offers an escalation, namely a distorted reflection of the viewer. In the final act, a teleprompter-like voice describes both the immediate situation and the imagined desires of a disappointed shopper who ultimately arrives at an absence – a stage where expectation lingers but resolution never fully materializes. 

Also a hair seems to have crept in, 2024 
Petrine, Paris
Installation, various materials

The exhibition comprises new works that take the gallery space itself as subject, exploring the relationship between the objects and their physical environment. Over the course of the past year the gallery space was documented with a book scanner, a technology that suggests automatic generation of objective reproduction. The scans however resulted in a contrary image: bearing traces of glitches, faults, disturbances, things that are fragile, changeable, manipulable. Embracing these traces opens up another methodology of creation, something that cannot be produced again and/or intentionally. A sociological approach to space puts forth that it is neither object or vessel, but rather a means of production. Enacted through social processes and conventions of use, they define the modes of such production. If before the space appeared empty, the doubling, reproducing, and fragmenting turns this perceived emptiness into objects, rendering what is on view into goods, setting off a continuous process of transmutations in a commercial setting.

Great Weather, 2023
Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Helsinki
Sublimation print on textile (420 cm x 140 cm)

Since the Renaissance, ceramic figurines have been used to decorate ceremonial tables, suggesting topics of conversation for guests. These conversation pieces often depicted taboo or provocative scenes, inviting discussion while allowing guests to gauge one another’s knowledge, taste, or cultural standing. Grouped together and removed from their customary context, the work considers their legibility today and proposes another way of looking at them, creating a setting for exchange and conviviality within a space not originally associated with either.

Talking in circles, 2022
Petrine, Paris
Glossy vinyl foil installed on floor, dimensions variable

Talking in circles invites visitors to follow a series of colorful streams of words throughout the exhibition space. The meandering, site-specific chains of letters on the floor consist of idiomatic expressions that appear chaotic at first, but once the reader decides on a line to follow, the multifaceted patterns reveal not only an unconventional navigation through the space, but also the underlying structures and patterns within these language images. The reading bodies themselves become an integral part of the installation, partly obscuring the letters with their presence, whilst simultaneously revealing them for distant observers.

Alina Rentsch lives and works in Berlin. Her work examines spatial expectation and the scripts that shape orientation, display, and movement. Through staging and rearranging spaces, she works with the social and economic codings embedded in these structures, drawing on the logics of advertising and signage to produce situations that guide perception without becoming fully explicit. She holds a BFA from Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin, and an MFA from Konstfack, Stockholm; she is represented by Petrine, Paris/Düsseldorf.

Booth, 2025
Frieze, London
PF400 Velour, 580 x 430 cm
LED panel, vinyl film, 200 x 60 x 15 cm

Booth transforms the corner space at Frieze London into a site of distortion and shifting perspectives. A printed carpet creates an anamorphic illusion of an imagined sub-level that resolves only from one precise point of view. Above, a single lamp voices an excerpt from her fair proposal, turning the booth into both a commercial metric and an image-producing device. Drawing on perspective devices, economic thresholds, and the shifting position of the viewer, the work moves between image and infrastructure, illusion and document. 

The presentation is accompanied by A Private Life, a text by Angharad Williams, adapted from The Last Testament and Will of Me (2021).

Also a hair seems to have crept in, 2024
Petrine, Paris
Installation, various materials

The exhibition comprises works that take the gallery space itself as their subject, exploring the relationship between objects and their physical environment. Over the course of a year, the gallery was documented with a book scanner, a technology that suggests the automatic production of objective reproductions. Instead, the scans reveal traces of glitches, faults, and disturbances, exposing the image as fragile, changeable, and manipulable. What initially appears as an empty space is transformed through processes of doubling, reproduction, and fragmentation into a collection of objects. In this process, what is on view becomes a commodity, setting in motion a continuous process of transformation within the commercial setting of the gallery.

Great Weather, 2023
Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Helsinki
Sublimation print on textile (420 cm x 140 cm)

Since the Renaissance, ceramic figurines have been used to decorate ceremonial tables, suggesting topics of conversation for guests. These conversation pieces often depicted taboo or provocative scenes, inviting discussion while allowing guests to gauge one another’s knowledge, taste, or cultural standing. Grouped together and removed from their customary context, the work considers their legibility today and proposes another way of looking at them, creating a setting for exchange and conviviality within a space not originally associated with either.

Talking in circles, 2022
Petrine, Paris
Glossy vinyl foil installed on floor, dimensions variable

Talking in circles invites visitors to follow a series of colorful streams of words throughout the exhibition space. The meandering, site-specific chains of letters on the floor consist of idiomatic expressions that appear chaotic at first, but once the reader decides on a line to follow, the multifaceted patterns reveal not only an unconventional navigation through the space, but also the underlying structures and patterns within these language images. The reading bodies themselves become an integral part of the installation, partly obscuring the letters with their presence, whilst simultaneously revealing them for distant observers.