Maren Karlson's LAG at Soft Opening, London: RAF Imagery and Media Memory

Key facts

• Maren Karlson's exhibition LAG is on view at Soft Opening, London, from 11 September to 17 October.
• The exhibition features six oil-and-graphite paintings titled LAG #1–6, all dated 2026.
• Four of the six paintings use source material from the Axel Springer Verlag archive, specifically newspaper images of the 1968 student protests following the attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke.
• The title LAG derives from the last three letters of Axel Springer Verlag.
• Two L-shaped canvases depict an assassination via car bomb during the RAF's 1980s third-generation militant renaissance.
• Two photographs, LAG #7–8, realize a spy trick from Harun Farocki's 1968 film Their Newspapers, using slits cut in archival articles to view an image of the Springer Verlag headquarters.
• Each painting is installed in a low alcove about 25 centimeters above the concrete floor, resembling a medieval fenestella.
• The works expand on Klaus Theweleit's concept of a 'reality-sign RAF' from the 2005 exhibition Regarding Terror at KW Institute, Berlin.
• Karlson's technique involves stretching images in Photoshop until unrecognizable before painting them, recalling Gerhard Richter's squeegeeing of wet oils.