Few contemporary painters match Kiefer’s combination of intellectual ambition, material intensity and sheer scale. His heavily worked surfaces appear burned, buried, weathered and excavated—less like conventional paintings than fragments recovered from history. White Cube Bermondsey’s expansive industrial galleries are particularly well suited to these imposing works, allowing visitors to experience their physical weight as well as the poetry, mythology and historical trauma embedded within them.

The exhibition will present recent paintings by Kiefer. While the specific works have not yet been announced, his current practice continues to explore:

The surfaces. Kiefer’s paintings often incorporate layers of paint, straw, soil, sand, ash, shellac or metal, transforming the canvas into something between an image, a sculpture and an archaeological site.

Even a relatively focused group of Kiefer paintings can be overwhelming in the best sense: monumental, physical and emotionally charged. Given White Cube Bermondsey’s scale and its history of presenting major Kiefer projects, this is likely to become an important London exhibition for winter 2026–27. Kiefer’s works reward slow looking: step back to absorb their scale, then move close enough to examine the cracked surfaces, embedded materials and handwritten references.