Ulla von Brandenburg

Pilar Corrias is delighted to present Thoughts Are Things, a solo exhibition of new textile works, sculptures, paintings and films by Ulla von Brandenburg. Drawing upon enduring influences in the histories of abstraction and modernism, such as occultism, synaesthesia and surrealism, the artist leads the viewer through a dreamlike, playful maze within the gallery’s Savile Row space. Ceramic sculptures, vibrant quilts and three films inspired by Sonia Delaunay all combine to create an immersive experience comparable to a visual symphony.

A piece of music that von Brandenburg improvised on the piano provided the original impetus for the exhibition. While listening back on a recording of her playing the composition, von Brandenburg transposed the music into a visual score, producing a drawing that she would later divide into seven distinct sections for a series of quilts. Synaesthesia is a recurring theme in the work of von Brandenburg, whose father would often relay his experiences of ‘seeing’ sound during her childhood. This intertwining of senses becomes an invitation for viewers to expand their own sensitivities towards vision, sound and the invisible spaces in between.

The geometrical shapes seen in the quilts find three-dimensional form in a series of ceramic sculptures – a new strand to the artist’s practice. Inspired by artists such as Giacometti and Tatlin, who created miniature models of their spectacular, visionary set designs, von Brandenburg’s ceramics serve as maquettes for dreamlike spaces, reminiscent of the female body, that would be impossible to build at scale. The works testify to the artist’s fascination with the constructed nature of our world, which is made up of a limited number of geometric shapes.

The exhibition culminates in three films inspired by Sonia Delaunay’s patterns, expanding beyond traditional surfaces to engulf clothing, fabric, walls, furniture, and even cars. Von Brandenburg magnifies these patterns to architectural proportions, creating scenes that are both phantasmagoric and deeply rooted in the tactile. The fabric itself becomes a bodily organ, incorporating magic tricks swallowed by the fabric and then spat back up.

The exhibition takes its title from the British theosophist Annie Besant’s publication Thought Forms (1905), a treatise on extrasensory perception that was a major influence on Kandinsky and the development of abstraction. Besant’s experiment in visualising thoughts, emotions, music and experiences of non-visible phenomena argued that such ‘thought forms’ could be transposed, expressed and shared with others as a form of communication.

Thoughts Are Things is a theatrical staging of von Brandenburg's vision of how form, colour and sound intermingle, inviting viewers to inhabit a space between objective form and their own sensations. The exhibition thus becomes an environment where the boundaries between shared space and subjective experience blur, opening new registers of aesthetic experience.