With “In lowly garb,” Cécile Lempert presents a new body of work at CASTLE, her first solo exhibition in the United States.
The title of the show quotes a Protestant Advent hymn based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert that begins: “Your King comes
in lowly garb,/He is carried by the burdened foal,/Receive Him joyfully, Jerusalem!” These lines capture a central theme of
the exhibition: how can philosophical and religious traditions produce both meaningful values and dangerous ideologies?
Lempert engages with the ambiguities of her family’s Kantian-Lutheran heritage and its ideological impact on both her
present personal life and broader society - shaping ideals such as modesty, individual moral responsibility, loyalty to
principles, and reason, while simultaneously providing an ideological foundation for Christian nationalism, war apologetics,
and authoritarianism.
At the center of the exhibition are two portraits of my great-grandfather, Paul Horn, a grammar school teacher and pious
Lutheran who volunteered enthusiastically for the First World War but soon returned wounded. As a traumatized participant,
he struggled throughout his life to make sense of the deaths of the fallen, as documented in several publications from the
1920s and 1930s—two of which are on display. In these texts, he grapples with profound questions: How can we find
meaning in senseless death? What makes a life - or a sacrifice - worthwhile?
His answer draws on Kantian philosophy: what matters is not the outcome of our actions, but the moral principles behind
them. We are, he writes, “in this world only dust”, and must “die off” with all we have to be “seized by god” - we must not
become too attached to worldly concerns, merely “vegetating” like animals at a trough. It is a philosophy of self-denial,
duty, and transcendence; yet Horn simultaneously uses these very ideas - principles over consequences, devotion to higher
purpose, rejection of material comfort - to justify rightist, authoritarian politics.
These portraits reveal their historic, documentary character through precise sparseness. They show a middle-aged man with
a stern, perhaps even threatening expression who both commands attention and yet seems completely distant. In both
portraits, Paul Horn dominates the foreground while his daughter is pushed to the edge and into the background, creating
not just individual portraits but a study of a father-daughter relationship, a reflection on family hierarchy and traditional
masculinity.
Both works are diptychs, each pairing the portrait with a second panel in strikingly different ways. In the first, the portrait
sits alongside a panel based on Edward Steichen’s 1904 photograph of a park with blossoming chestnut trees. This pastoral
scene lends the composition a gentler touch, functioning as a visual space for contemplation and anchoring the work to
a more distant past. In the second diptych, Advent 1936, the portrait is paired with close-up details from the same family
photograph: the modest yet bourgeois table setting, the chain of his pocket watch. Through this almost microscopic focus on
seemingly minor details, Lempert draws historic and psychological significance from what might otherwise be overlooked.
Lempert juxtaposes these historical portraits with a split-screen portrait of me looking closely at an altarpiece by German
Gothic painter Stefan Lochner. This vastly larger-than-life image, shown in full profile and intense color, contrasts sharply with
the spare black-and-white photographs from the 1930s. Positioned to face toward Advent 1936, the contemporary portrait
creates a visual conversation across time—an interplay of looks and gestures that connects a young man from the present
with a formative family background whose cultural impact still resonates 90 years later.
This visual dialogue between past and present asks: how do we reckon with a family heritage that contains both meaningful
values and deeply troubling beliefs? What stance should we take toward our family background when we understand its
problematic aspects? Lempert invites us to consider how this Kantian-Lutheran ideology continues to shape our present
culture and the newly rising fascism we face today.
This contrastive treatment of photographs from 1904 to 2024 leads to another central theme of the exhibition, picking up
a strand of Lempert’s earlier work: an exploration of our experience of time, simultaneity, and transience. In a strange way,
scenes from the distant past acquire present life while contemporary scenes become historicized through this contrastive
hanging, creating an oscillation between closeness and distance.
This negotiation of time and transience finds its fullest expression in the final major work of the exhibition: Lupinen, a large-
scale triptych depicting a field of lupine flowers, greatly enlarged and abstracted, with shifts between the three panels that show repeated patterns without falling into any clear geometric relations, like the motion of the sea. Against the weight of
ideology and family history, the work offers a meditation on natural cycles and impermanence—a visual breath amid the
exhibition’s more fraught questions.
Cécile Lempert (b. 1994, Dortmund, Germany) lives and works in Cologne, Germany. She studied fine arts at
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2014 to 2021 under Prof. Peter Piller and Prof. Stefan Kürten. Recent solo and two-person
exhibitions include: roubled at his saying at IAH Gallery, Seoul (2025); A provisional topography, a two-artist show with
Hirakari Ono, at xyz collective, Tokyo (2025); Splits and Screens at Elsa Meunier, Paris (2025) An evening far at Super
Super Markt, Berlin (2024); Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again, curated by Miriam Bettin, at BRAUNSFELDER,
Cologne (2024). Recent group exhibitions include Portraits at BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne (2025); Nemesis at YveYANG
Gallery, New York (2024); Timespaces at Elsa Meunier, Paris (2024); Beeldhonger - Hunger nach Bildern at Museum No
Hero, Delden (2024); Polyphonic Resonance at Chung Art Museum, Shanghai (2024). Lempert participated in the Aq
Tushetil Artist Residency in Omalo, Georgia (2019) and completed an exchange at the Royal College of Arts, London. She
founded the exhibition space AURA in Düsseldorf in 2021 and has received multiple scholarships including the MKW
Stipendium Auf geht’s! (2020, 2021) and the Deutschlandstipendium (2019). Her work is held in collections including the
Braunsfelder Family Collection, Cologne, and Museum No Hero, Delden.
The title of the show quotes a Protestant Advent hymn based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert that begins: “Your King comes
in lowly garb,/He is carried by the burdened foal,/Receive Him joyfully, Jerusalem!” These lines capture a central theme of
the exhibition: how can philosophical and religious traditions produce both meaningful values and dangerous ideologies?
Lempert engages with the ambiguities of her family’s Kantian-Lutheran heritage and its ideological impact on both her
present personal life and broader society - shaping ideals such as modesty, individual moral responsibility, loyalty to
principles, and reason, while simultaneously providing an ideological foundation for Christian nationalism, war apologetics,
and authoritarianism.
At the center of the exhibition are two portraits of my great-grandfather, Paul Horn, a grammar school teacher and pious
Lutheran who volunteered enthusiastically for the First World War but soon returned wounded. As a traumatized participant,
he struggled throughout his life to make sense of the deaths of the fallen, as documented in several publications from the
1920s and 1930s—two of which are on display. In these texts, he grapples with profound questions: How can we find
meaning in senseless death? What makes a life - or a sacrifice - worthwhile?
His answer draws on Kantian philosophy: what matters is not the outcome of our actions, but the moral principles behind
them. We are, he writes, “in this world only dust”, and must “die off” with all we have to be “seized by god” - we must not
become too attached to worldly concerns, merely “vegetating” like animals at a trough. It is a philosophy of self-denial,
duty, and transcendence; yet Horn simultaneously uses these very ideas - principles over consequences, devotion to higher
purpose, rejection of material comfort - to justify rightist, authoritarian politics.
These portraits reveal their historic, documentary character through precise sparseness. They show a middle-aged man with
a stern, perhaps even threatening expression who both commands attention and yet seems completely distant. In both
portraits, Paul Horn dominates the foreground while his daughter is pushed to the edge and into the background, creating
not just individual portraits but a study of a father-daughter relationship, a reflection on family hierarchy and traditional
masculinity.
Both works are diptychs, each pairing the portrait with a second panel in strikingly different ways. In the first, the portrait
sits alongside a panel based on Edward Steichen’s 1904 photograph of a park with blossoming chestnut trees. This pastoral
scene lends the composition a gentler touch, functioning as a visual space for contemplation and anchoring the work to
a more distant past. In the second diptych, Advent 1936, the portrait is paired with close-up details from the same family
photograph: the modest yet bourgeois table setting, the chain of his pocket watch. Through this almost microscopic focus on
seemingly minor details, Lempert draws historic and psychological significance from what might otherwise be overlooked.
Lempert juxtaposes these historical portraits with a split-screen portrait of me looking closely at an altarpiece by German
Gothic painter Stefan Lochner. This vastly larger-than-life image, shown in full profile and intense color, contrasts sharply with
the spare black-and-white photographs from the 1930s. Positioned to face toward Advent 1936, the contemporary portrait
creates a visual conversation across time—an interplay of looks and gestures that connects a young man from the present
with a formative family background whose cultural impact still resonates 90 years later.
This visual dialogue between past and present asks: how do we reckon with a family heritage that contains both meaningful
values and deeply troubling beliefs? What stance should we take toward our family background when we understand its
problematic aspects? Lempert invites us to consider how this Kantian-Lutheran ideology continues to shape our present
culture and the newly rising fascism we face today.
This contrastive treatment of photographs from 1904 to 2024 leads to another central theme of the exhibition, picking up
a strand of Lempert’s earlier work: an exploration of our experience of time, simultaneity, and transience. In a strange way,
scenes from the distant past acquire present life while contemporary scenes become historicized through this contrastive
hanging, creating an oscillation between closeness and distance.
This negotiation of time and transience finds its fullest expression in the final major work of the exhibition: Lupinen, a large-
scale triptych depicting a field of lupine flowers, greatly enlarged and abstracted, with shifts between the three panels that show repeated patterns without falling into any clear geometric relations, like the motion of the sea. Against the weight of
ideology and family history, the work offers a meditation on natural cycles and impermanence—a visual breath amid the
exhibition’s more fraught questions.
Cécile Lempert (b. 1994, Dortmund, Germany) lives and works in Cologne, Germany. She studied fine arts at
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2014 to 2021 under Prof. Peter Piller and Prof. Stefan Kürten. Recent solo and two-person
exhibitions include: roubled at his saying at IAH Gallery, Seoul (2025); A provisional topography, a two-artist show with
Hirakari Ono, at xyz collective, Tokyo (2025); Splits and Screens at Elsa Meunier, Paris (2025) An evening far at Super
Super Markt, Berlin (2024); Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again, curated by Miriam Bettin, at BRAUNSFELDER,
Cologne (2024). Recent group exhibitions include Portraits at BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne (2025); Nemesis at YveYANG
Gallery, New York (2024); Timespaces at Elsa Meunier, Paris (2024); Beeldhonger - Hunger nach Bildern at Museum No
Hero, Delden (2024); Polyphonic Resonance at Chung Art Museum, Shanghai (2024). Lempert participated in the Aq
Tushetil Artist Residency in Omalo, Georgia (2019) and completed an exchange at the Royal College of Arts, London. She
founded the exhibition space AURA in Düsseldorf in 2021 and has received multiple scholarships including the MKW
Stipendium Auf geht’s! (2020, 2021) and the Deutschlandstipendium (2019). Her work is held in collections including the
Braunsfelder Family Collection, Cologne, and Museum No Hero, Delden.
In lowly garb
October 11 – November 8, 2025