When can LIGHT TOUCHES be visited?

The exhibition can be seen from August 27, 2026, to January 2, 2027. The stated opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where is the exhibition located?

LIGHT TOUCHES takes place at Palais Bellevue, Schöne Aussicht 2, 34117 Kassel.

What is the admission fee?

Admission to the exhibition is free.

Is the exhibition barrier-free accessible?

The exhibition leads barrier-free through several rooms of Palais Bellevue on three floors.

What events accompany the exhibition?

The accompanying program includes discussions, a guided tour, a leporello workshop, a reading, and a conversation with Brigitte Zypries. Registration is required for the workshop on October 25.

What artistic works are displayed?

Displayed are handcrafted watermark papers, spatial installations, and text-related works by Barbara Beisinghoff, including pieces referencing Christa Wolf, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Gaston Bachelard.

LIGHT TOUCHES: How Barbara Beisinghoff Transforms Paper, Light, and Language

Name: LIGHT TOUCHES
Start: 2026-10-09T10:00:00+02:00
End: 2027-01-02T16:00:00+01:00
Location: Palais Bellevue

LIGHT TOUCHES: When Paper Begins to Shine

At Palais Bellevue in Kassel, Barbara Beisinghoff unfolds a poetic art experience between light, language, and space. Delicate, handcrafted watermark papers engage in a silent dialogue with the changing daylight at the historic windows. The exhibition connects inside and outside, visible and invisible, materiality and spiritual movement.

Watermarks as Illuminated Thoughts

The filigree paper works glow in backlight and change their effect with each step through the rooms. Beisinghoff understands paper not merely as a carrier of images but as an independent medium for color, light, writing, and perception. In the watermarks, craftsmanship, poetic image creation, and a particular sensitivity to the transitions between surface and depth come together.

An Exhibition in the Historic Window Space

The numerous windows of Palais Bellevue form the starting point of the curation. On three floors, a barrier-free accessible spatial installation emerges, where the architecture itself becomes part of the artwork's contemplation. In front of the semi-circular supraporte windows in the hall, two images appear with the word Reschit, described in the Zohar as the first spark of light and the first word.

Literature, Philosophy, and Visual Poetry

On the first floor, a visual axis connects an ochre-colored watermark in the fireplace room with the white sheet Light of the eye and of the mind in the opposite room. On the second floor, words from Christa Wolf's Cassandra make an appearance: Chaos could take on structure around words like iron filings around a magnet. In the astronomy room, further watermarks reference Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. A display case shows the artist's book KUPFERSTICHE BEWOHNEN from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space as well as a white sheet with a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, whose words were written with a water jet.

Dynamic Spaces and Aesthetic Experience

Under the vaulted arch of the library, three layers of watermarks slowly rotate above each other. This installation makes light experienceable as a dynamic, temporal phenomenon. The exhibition atmosphere thrives on transparency, shadows, fine contours, and the concentrated silence of Palais Bellevue. Those engaging with the nuances between the visible and the invisible experience a contemplation of the work that is at once sensory, literary, and art historically stimulating.

Barbara Beisinghoff and the Art of Paper

Barbara Beisinghoff has been working with etching, artist books, handmade paper, and watermarks for decades. Her art makes visible the relationships between inside and outside, surface and depth, and different levels of perception. Works by the artist are found, among others, in the National Museum in Krakow, the Library of Congress, and the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. For her work, she has received, among others, the International Senefelder Prize for lithography and the Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Prize for visual arts.

Accompanying Events

The exhibition includes discussions, a guided tour, a leporello workshop, and a reading. On October 25, Susanne Mihm-Lutz invites to a workshop that can only be attended by prior registration. On November 15, Marcus Angebauer and Heiko Schimmelpfeng will read under the title The World in the Window prose and letters from Rosa Luxemburg to James Salter. The event series is complemented by a discussion with Brigitte Zypries, former Federal Minister, on November 29.

Conclusion: Light as an Invitation to Perception

LIGHT TOUCHES welcomes visitors with an exhibition that connects paper, architecture, literature, and daylight into a silent visual composition. The art experience at Palais Bellevue opens new perspectives on watermarks, artist books, and the poetic power of materials. A visit enriches cultural education as well as personal aesthetic experience and makes visible how intensely light can touch our perception.