Potsdam-based Galerie Schindler is leaving its previous location on Charlottenstraße and moving to the historic Villa von Kleist at Hegelallee 4. On Saturday, 26 September 2026, gallerist Sandra Schindler will open the gallery’s first dedicated spaces there with the group exhibition AN DIE NACHTIGALL. The exhibition features works by Kathrin Rank, Uta Reinhardt and Su Weiss. The move will also bring the gallery into closer collaboration with Unfold Studio, already based at the villa, with plans to add an artist-in-residence programme in the future.
Image above: Villa von Kleist, Außenansicht Turm, © Galerie Schindler
Since its foundation in 2019, Galerie Schindler has been part of Potsdam’s gallery scene. Sandra Schindler initially opened the gallery together with Katrin Behrens under the name Galerie Sprungbrett. After the two founders went their separate ways, it became Galerie Schindler in 2020. Since then, Schindler has increasingly focused the programme on long-term collaborations with artists. Painting and works on paper are at its core, often exploring the territory where figuration and abstraction intersect.
A new chapter now begins. The gallery has left its premises at Charlottenstraße 86 and is moving to the Villa von Kleist at Hegelallee 4. The building is listed in the State of Brandenburg’s register of monuments as the ‘Villa von Kleist with enclosure’.
For the gallery, the move also represents a significant change in spatial terms. Walls up to four metres high and generously proportioned rooms open up new possibilities, particularly for large-scale painting. According to the gallery, this architecture was one of the key reasons behind the move.
The gallery’s connection with the building, however, predates its new lease. As early as May 2025, Galerie Schindler, together with the couture art label By Told, presented the British artist Jill Tegan Doherty at the villa. In May and June 2026, this was followed by IT IS ON US by Janosch Weiss, a collaboration between Galerie Schindler and Unfold Studio. The new location therefore builds on an established relationship.
Gallery and Residency Under One Roof
Unfold Studio sees itself as a space for artistic presence, where art can be encountered in many different ways. The villa provides two exhibition spaces as well as a further immersive space for this purpose. Artists from Berlin and Potsdam will be invited to transform and rethink these spaces in relation to their own practice during a residency. Art will also be presented here beyond the immediate commercial gallery context, creating opportunities for exchange with audiences and fellow artists.
At the same time, the new location opens up the gallery programme to new formats. Galerie Schindler’s regular exhibitions and Unfold’s residencies will be able to interact with one another, both spatially and conceptually, allowing new connections to emerge.
AN DIE NACHTIGALL
The first exhibition at the new location is AN DIE NACHTIGALL. The title is taken from Heinrich von Kleist’s short poem of the same name, in which Kleist asks the nightingale where it retreats to when the autumn winds arrive. With Kleist’s characteristic wit, the answer is remarkably concise: it spends the winter in the throat of a singer. For this inaugural exhibition, Sandra Schindler brings together three painters: Kathrin Rank, Uta Reinhardt and Su Weiss. Figure, colour and space provide a common thread between three positions that pursue distinctly different approaches to painting.
Kathrin Rank and Uta Reinhardt share a particular history. Both were born in Bielefeld, initially studying under Inge Dörries-Höher at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and later under Hermann Albert at the Braunschweig University of Art. Both were members of the painting group Konvention and have exhibited together regularly since 2001. Their works now meet once again in Potsdam.
Between Figure and Landscape
Kathrin Rank, born in Bielefeld in 1967, lives and works in Berlin. In 1999, she became a master student of Hermann Albert at the Braunschweig University of Art. Her large-scale oil paintings move between landscape, figure and atmospheric space. In works such as Nebelmeer (2025) and Bernsteingelbe Antworten (2023), human figures appear small against landscapes shaped by colour, light and painterly ambiguity. Rank’s works are held in collections including the Dafen Art Museum in China, Investitionsbank Berlin and Nord/LB.
Uta Reinhardt, also born in Bielefeld in 1966, now lives and works in Reichersbeuern in Upper Bavaria. In her paintings, nature encounters spaces shaped by human intervention. Works such as Wintergarten and the diptych Spring demonstrate how Reinhardt transforms figurative points of reference into open pictorial spaces defined by colour.
Su Weiss brings to the exhibition an artist with a direct connection to Potsdam. Born in Nuremberg in 1973, the painter lived and worked in Potsdam before moving to Berlin, where she is now based. She completed her Master’s degree at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin in 2018. Her interiors and landscapes explore memory and perception. A recurring element is the horizon as a ‘ligne de base’, a line around which pictorial spaces are structured while simultaneously opening up. Weiss’s works are held in collections including the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection in London and the collection of the Hasso Plattner Foundation.
AN DIE NACHTIGALL thus serves both as the inaugural exhibition and as a first exploration of the gallery’s new spatial setting. Three distinct approaches to painting encounter an architecture that offers them greater height and viewing distance than was possible at the previous location.
For gallerist Sandra Schindler, this marks the beginning of a new phase after seven years of running a gallery in Potsdam. Charlottenstraße was where Galerie Sprungbrett became Galerie Schindler and where its current programme took shape. At the Villa von Kleist, this programme now has more room to unfold – and, in Unfold, a partner that expands the exhibition format through residencies and artistic exchange.
WHEN?
Opening: Saturday, 26 September 2026, 5 pm
Exhibition: Saturday, 26 September to Saturday, 7 November 2026
Opening hours: Wednesday to Friday, 12 noon–6 pm, and by appointment
WHERE?
Galerie Schindler
Villa von Kleist
Hegelallee 4
14467 Potsdam
