German artist Clemens Behr builds site-specific installations from objects found in each city. His chaotic surfaces hide meticulous structure—lines and local debris arranged into grounded, energetic environments.
11. Form and Negative Space: Clemens Behr
Original Author: Pinzle CEO Jin Jun-hwa (www.pinzle.net)
Adapter & Editor: ONDA Manager Somora
Monthly Artwork: Pinzle Website: www.pinzle.net
Pinzle is Korea's only art subscription service, introducing one artist and their work each month. We created this series to share what the lives and spaces of our favorite artists look like — and to inspire everyone who creates spaces of their own.
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Clemens Behr is an artist obsessed with process. Born in Koblenz, Germany, in 1985, he's active in Berlin today. Browsing his website, you get the sense that Clemens doesn't get too hung up on materials or where a piece lives. But there's something else — the seeming chaos of his work doesn't feel confusing. It feels alive. His play of light and color pulls you into the environment around the piece, injecting energy into wherever it's placed. Would meeting Clemens feel just as unconventional? Would his life mirror that three-dimensional restlessness? I imagined someone wild, maybe a little rough around the edges.
But the more I looked, the more stability revealed itself. Those lines cutting through the work weren't chaos — they were structure. They pressed down on disparate shapes and colors, quietly arranging them. The objects tangled across his installations weren't random after all. They were rearranged according to Clemens's logic.
A little research sealed it: every object in a work comes from the city where it's made and the specific site where it's installed. That explained the strange sense of groundedness. And his website? Meticulously organized. Turns out I couldn't wait to fly to Berlin and learn more about his life and work.
His neighborhood, Kreuzberg
Clemens greeting us outside his studio
That Day's Vibe
After a long flight, Berlin greets you with its signature atmosphere. Worn-down buildings and grimy alleys are common across Europe, but here they somehow amplify Berlin's unique charm. The city refuses to wear one single color. Different cultures coexist in their own ways, creating balance within Berlin. The stately buildings in the squares, the playful university campuses, the wide-open Autobahn — each flaunts its personality and breathes life into the city. This unfiltered mix of lifestyles never tips into discomfort or clutter. It's all thanks to that balance, and the vitality it generates.
Kreuzberg, where Clemens lives, is quintessential Berlin. The city I once knew only for its salty, stiff food and sharp beer now felt like an exciting space where I'd meet an artist — and see his work as part of the city itself. Trips to unfamiliar cities are always thrilling, but Berlin's singular energy made my steps toward Clemens's studio even lighter.
The Meeting
Past streets plastered with posters, I spotted his studio in the distance. A bright yellow cap caught my eye first. Clemens, waiting outside to greet us. We followed his wide smile into the studio, which was mid-cleanup for guests. Small and cozy, but with high ceilings and excellent natural light — that's where our meeting with Clemens unfolded. Awkward hellos and scattered introductions gave way to coffee, which quickly settled everyone in. Our conversation began in that easy atmosphere.
Conversation in a relaxed setting
Clemens introducing past work
Clemens draws inspiration from urban architecture and music across genres. He pays attention to the results when different things intersect freely — or randomly. He's into traveling and DJing. His studio had vinyl records scattered everywhere, and boxes full of them stacked in corners. The music that fuels his imagination must pour out of that sound system and those speakers tucked in the corner. Even though he studied graphic design, he gravitates toward installation work that blends collage and painting — a natural extension of these interests.
Sound equipment that fuels his inspiration
His favorite vinyl collection
Graffiti, Painting, Installation
I asked Clemens, who creates such varied work, what his favorite tool was. No hesitation — he pointed straight at the spray can on his desk. As a teenager, graffiti was his life. Every emotion he felt came out through it. That naturally led him to graphic design, but working for clients turned out to be less fun than he'd hoped. So Clemens shifted from conventional design toward work for himself. He moved into painting, and to get the painting he wanted, he started building his own canvases. Building canvases led to sculpture. Installing the sculptures led to installation work. One thing after another. Art begetting art.
His go-to tools
Work in the City, and Materials
Another fascinating detail from our conversation: Clemens combines, connects, and colors materials he finds in the city for his work — and sometimes he takes them apart again for the next piece. The assembled form lives on in images, but not as a finished object. It's been dismantled, ready to become part of another process. In a way, his creative practice never stops. The process itself becomes the art. Depending on timing, his work can always be disassembled for what comes next. Hearing that made me study each piece in the studio more carefully. A large installation behind Clemens that held our gaze the entire interview? It was coming down the next day.
The work we saw in person radiated far more vitality than in photos. It's still installation made from found city materials, but it felt almost sculptural. Was it the thickness of layered objects creating that dimensionality? Or just the sheer size? Either way, his pieces command presence wherever they are. The types of objects and how they're combined differ every time, but through the process of assembling disparate objects into one work, we always glimpse Clemens's view of that city. The varied shapes and colors that make up a city bring energy to each other and to the situation and environment they inhabit when they come together. These combinations may be temporary and incomplete, but they glimmer with new possibilities yet to come.
A large installation hanging in the corner
His Treasure Trove
When Clemens offered to show us his storage, we got up and followed. He opened the door and — chaos. Materials with wildly different personalities, stacked neatly yet haphazardly on shelves, greeted us head-on. Clemens travels the world for his work, collecting materials from various cities. This act is crucial to his practice. The city's many facets — time, space, people, culture — produce byproducts that become his materials. These accidental (or inevitable) elements combine to complete his work. After the exhibition ends, he breaks the piece down and returns it. Clemens believes his work should belong to the moment, not last forever. Plus, he joked, he has nowhere to store it, and maintenance would be a nightmare.
The storage room
Artist and City
After the studio interview, we took a neighborhood walk with Clemens. Strolling through the area, we continued talking about his approach to work. Clemens does conceive an overall structure for his pieces, but he doesn't fuss over minor harmonies. He simply connects and rearranges the fragments, materializing one of countless possibilities. In fact, he explained, the practical concerns — adjusting angles so objects sit well together, shifting the center of gravity for optimal installation — are the real keys to finishing a piece. Naturally, we began spotting little Berlins in Clemens's conversation and work. The distinctive dimensionality of his pieces, which refuse to be painted in uniform colors, echoed the city's unique vitality we'd felt since arriving in Berlin.
Neighborhood walk with Clemens
We stopped in front of a barbershop. A friend of his runs it. They must be close — his friend greeted us warmly and agreed to photos without hesitation. Behind him, another installation caught my eye. Sure enough, it was Clemens's work. Just as cities grow and subdivide by plan, Clemens's work comes together with vitality, then disperses as needed, only to reassemble in a new form.
His friend, who runs the barbershop
At his regular kebab place, I noticed a distinctive tile pattern on the wall. That pattern becomes part of the city's atmosphere, too. Maybe that's why the works we encountered resembled the cities they inhabited. Even without thinking about how materials collected in each city complete the work, the way different materials retain their individual character while converging into one piece mirrors how disparate people, cultures, environments, and vibes balance out in a city. People and societies, cultures and communities — they gather and scatter endlessly, forming the bustling city.
A distinctive pattern spotted at his go-to kebab shop
It got me thinking: not just art, but everything in the world — and our lives — exist as a process of repeated disassembly and combination. Endings are just new beginnings.
Books and movies are for everyone these days, but art still feels distant and difficult. What if you knew how the creator sees the world before encountering their work? Wouldn't it feel richer than seeing it as just another image? Pinzle, an art subscription service, introduces one artist each month with that perspective in mind. We visit globally recognized artists, document their lifestyles in video and print, and produce their selected works as large-format artworks. We hope to gift art to those who thought it wasn't for them or found it too pricey — bringing it a little closer.
Clemens Behr's work <Acores Marina Mauer Revisited> is a collage created exclusively for Pinzle readers. The title references the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago. Translated, it means "Azores Marina Wall Revisited." That word "revisited" hints at attachment or longing for the island. The artist transformed a photo into an impossible structure, intentionally distorting it during scanning. The collage's first impression is bleak and mysterious, but by reconstructing the space, it makes you look again.
Clemens Behr's 'Acores Marina Mauer Revisited'
Faded colors evoke loneliness. A wall standing alone in the center deepens the solitude. The disassembled, disparate fragments feel jarring — naturally, we try to restore them to their original form. But what if you gave yourself space to just look? At first, the form's hard to grasp. But if you accept it as is and search for order and balance within, that initial loneliness and dissonance give way to curiosity about the building and the space. It lets us perceive space differently than usual.
Living as part of a city is undeniably exhausting. But when the small encounters you experience along the way can each shine as a new possibility — like Clemens's work — life becomes dimensional and alive. Not every moment can be art right away, but there's a reason to adopt Clemens's gaze as he roams cities searching for small objects, anticipating the work to come. I hope everyone reading this experiences the vitality of Berlin reflected in Clemens's work.
Deep thanks to the readers who followed 'Artist Spaces' over the past 11 months, and to ONDA, Magazine ON, and Manager Somora for breathing new life into Pinzle's content. We hope the lives and spaces of the artists we met around the world offer inspiration — even if small — to those creating better hospitality cultures.
[Series Index]
(Tokyo Edition) 2018. 08 A Modest Family Home: Taku Bannai 2018. 09 Quintessentially Japanese Tatami: Kotaro Machiyama 2018. 10 A Master's Studio: Tatsuro Kiuchi
(Paris Edition) 2018. 11 Filled with Love: Severine Assous 2018. 12 Cozy Nest: Vincent Mahé 2019. 01 A Playground Built with His Daughter: Tom Haugomat 2019. 02 Hip & Trendy: Akatre Studio
(Berlin Edition) 2019. 03 Bethanien Museum, Source of Inspiration: Michela Picchi 2019. 04 Smoke-Filled: Guillaume Kashima 2019. 05 Berlin University of the Arts: Carmen Reina 2019. 06 Form and Negative Space: Clemens Behr
