Curated by JVDW, NICHE filled two floors of the vetsak showroom, an Altbau villa in Düsseldorf-Unterbilk. There is no white cube here: paintings hang above the sofas, sculptures line the stairwell beside the beanbags, and every room invites you to sink in and take your time.

In Kevin Lowenthal’s paintings, “the insistent use of the vertical is disrupted by horizontal flickers of paint. Using a palette that ranges from CMYK tones to muted beige, his use of curtain-like motifs lend a sense of suspension.” Pieces made to fit together, yet never quite settled, feel close to home at vetsak, where every sofa is built from separate seats and sides, designed to be pulled apart and arranged again and again.

Both Paulina Hoffmann and Hannah Sophie Dunkelberg “position their practices in close proximity to manufacturing, form, and industry.” Hoffmann’s “bag-like PVC forms are pinned to the wall, woven, pleated, and suspended between states of function and display.” In the stairwell, “they take on a sentinel-like presence, quietly resisting the viewer’s expectation of use.” Dunkelberg’s work is “form-fitted and high-gloss.”

In her own words: “Ultimately, material is not that important to me, rather states of being, man-made things.”

In the showroom, both share the rooms and stairwell with vetsak’s lounge furniture.

Ricardo Passaporte’s painting, “presents a stand-off between two groups of children, a snowball held aloft, a fight about to ensue.” In the artist’s words: “Sometimes painting is relax, sometimes is war, sometimes is productive and sometimes is destructive.”

Maja Günther, on the other hand, “approaches play as mode rather than subject.”

“The uncanny surfaces most clearly in the works of Alissa Ritter and Diana Bloedorn; Ritter’s fibre-glass faces seem to emerge from walls, their interiors bruised with colour.” Bloedorn’s works, “turn on the doll and its associated registers of the cute and the uncanny.”

David Schiesser’s line drawings “follow an associative logic, somewhere between a dream and a placard.” In his own words: “I would describe my approach as an intuitive drawing-exploration of topics such as the human body, sciences and relations between humans and animals.” And: “Everyone can interpret a drawing, which makes it very democratic.” His drawing hangs above a vetsak Cord Velour sofa.

“In Stefan Marx’ work, minimalism is central, with monochromatic, text-based motifs taking the fore.”