Pi Project is a non-commercial art platform based in Frankfurt am Main, dedicated to dialogue across geographies, disciplines, and generations. The project brings together artists from Frankfurt with artists from across Europe, while consciously placing contemporary positions in conversation with historical artistic practices.
At the core of Pi Art Project lies an interest in the intersections of art, science, and nature. This focus reflects the long-term artistic practice of its founder, Mathias Kessler, whose work has explored these themes internationally for over 25 years. Since relocating from New York to Frankfurt, Kessler has sought to activate his international network and connect it with the local artistic community—creating a platform that operates outside the logic of the commercial art market. As a collaborator Since this year artist Bjoern Drenkwitz is part of the project and we hope with public fundings to create a interesting program together
For 2026, Bjoern and Mathias have developed a program—envisioned with the support of the City of Frankfurt and Land Hessen—centered on artistic juxtaposition and exchange. Each project pairs a Frankfurt-based artist with an international artist. Each contributes a single work, and through their deliberate juxtaposition, a space for dialogue emerges: between artworks, between artistic positions, and between local and global perspectives. These encounters are expanded through conversations with artists, curators, and thinkers.
With the generous support of Galerie Heike Strelow, we can also draws on established cultural networks to invite a broad public into these discussions—positioning the off-space as a site of encounter, reflection, and shared inquiry.
About
Projects 2026
WINTERPIONIERE
Winter Pioniere
brings together rare historical photographs from the Karl Max Kessler Archive with the contemporary context of Pi Art Projects in Frankfurt am Main.
Between 1907 and 1960, Karl Max Kessler documented the emergence of skiing in the Kleinwalsertal—at a moment when winter landscapes shifted from sites of labor and survival to arenas of exploration, sport, and shared imagination.
The exhibition presents intimate 10 × 15 cm glass negatives alongside carefully produced prints: skiers in motion, early pioneers carving through untouched snow, and expansive alpine landscapes that speak of endurance, curiosity, and joy. Seen today—against the backdrop of international winter competitions and the symbolic gathering of ski nations—the images resonate as quiet witnesses to a formative chapter of alpine culture.
Winter Pioneers is both an homage to the beginnings of skiing and a reflection on winter itself: as memory, as cultural practice, and as a fragile landscape shaped by time.
More information:
fotokessler.org
19.2.2026 - 31.8.2025
A YEAR WITHOUT SUMMER
A Year Without a Summer – Art, Climate, and the Atmosphere
Pi – π Projects and
Galerie Heike Strelow
presented:
A Year Without a Summer – Art, Climate, and the Atmosphere
an exhibition and book project by
Mathias Kessler and Ahmet Civilek
(located above Galerie Heike Strelow, Frankfurt)
Location: Frankfurt am Main
Exhibition Dates: September 5 – October 18, 2025
Opening: Friday, September 5, 2025
Season Opening Weekend: September 6–7, 2025
Publication: DISTANZ Verlag
Exhibition Overview
A Year Without a Summer marked the exhibition launch of the eponymous publication released by DISTANZ Verlag and was realized in collaboration with Galerie Heike Strelow and Pi – π Projects.
The exhibition brought together minimalist gradient paintings reflecting shifts in the color of the sky and the presence of fine particulate matter, alongside photographic works documenting illegally exported European plastic waste dumped in Adana, Turkey. At the center of the exhibition was a monumental carpet woven from plastic—conceived as a speculative proposal to remove waste from cycles of production and disposal.
By combining aesthetic reduction with ecological urgency, the exhibition made visible the often-invisible forces shaping the atmosphere today: air pollution, global waste streams, and the long-term consequences of climate change. A Year Without a Summer attracted strong public and professional interest and was accompanied by talks and related events.
Installation views and additional project material are documented in the archive section of this website.
Publication
A Year Without a Summer
Mathias Kessler
Published by DISTANZ Verlag, Berlin
More information:
→ www.mathiaskessler.com
→ https://www.pi-314159.org
Bio — Mathias Kessler
Mathias Kessler is a New York–based artist whose practice critically reimagines concepts of nature and landscape. Drawing on art history, philosophy, and eco-political discourse, his work restages representations of natural processes. Romantic painting, Land Art, and digital renderings collide to unsettle familiar oppositions such as nature and culture, represent
16.5.2025 - 31.8.2025
Images:
Projects 2025
DAVOS ORGONE DEVICE
Pi - π
and
The Center For Planetary Self Defense
Presents:
DAVOS ORGONE DEVICE
The exhibition coming up on the 6th of September 2024 at Pi - π documents how the Center For Planetary Self Defense (artist duo Mathias Kessler and Jakob S. Boeskov) traveled to the Jakobshorn in January 2024 to install an art homage to Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich in the mountains above the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
To create the project, the artist transported all art materials by ski. The artists created the project from a base in a mountain hut at an altitude of 1800 meters, accessible only by ski lift. Visitors to the exhibition will see artifacts from the art expedition, as well as video, photographic, and detailed drawings chronicling the expedition and documentation. We're excited to show a humorous and novel project that celebrates the power of new thinking.
Visitors to the exhibition will see drawings, expedition outfits, photos, and the Orgon Device sculpture, which the artists installed in the snow-covered mountains during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The show will also feature a short video documenting the performance.
Wilhelm Reich, author of “The Mass Psychology of Fascism,” was an Austrian psychoanalyst, inventor, and author of several books, including The Mass Psychology of Fascism. He escaped Austria in 1939 and later lived in Denmark, Norway, and finally Maine, USA. He died in jail in the USA in 1957.
Dates: 6.9.2024 – 5.10.2024
Location: Lange Str. 31/1st Floor, 60311 Frankfurt am Main
Bio Jakob Boeskov:
Jakob S. Boeskov, is an artist based in New York City. His diverse practice spans drawings, 3D printing, text, music, paintings, sculptures, and videos. Boeskov's work has been shown at the New Museum, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Stedelijk Museum, and the Danish National Gallery.
Bio Mathias Kessler:
Mathias Kessler, is a New York-based artist who critiques and reimagines the concept of nature. Quoting from art history, philosophy and eco-political debates, Kessler re-stages representations of natural processes. Romantic painting, land art and digital renderings compete and collide in order to unhinge familiar oppositions such as nature and culture, representation and experience, and ideology and aesthetics. Kessler’s contribution to current utopian and dystopian debates is at once intelligent, grave, comic and visually stunning.
6.9.2024 - 10.10.2024
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Project 2024
Raphael Lyon, Black Hole
฿l^¢к βθж - ฿l^¢к Ħσl£ ist eine Installation mit neuen Skulpturen von Raphael Lyon. Mit dieser Ausstellung erforscht Lyon die kryptischen Parallelen zwischen generativer künstlicher Intelligenz und der Entstehung von Leben aus Nichtleben. Durch den Einsatz von elektrochemischer Abscheidung, intensiver Hitze, kontrollierter Elektrizität und anderen wissenschaftlichen Methoden hat Lyon eine ortsspezifische Installation geschaffen, die eine Vielzahl von halborganischen Kompositionen, rekombinanten Skulpturen und sich entwickelnden Wandteppichen beherbergt.
Das dunkle Innere der Ausstellung, die minimale Beleuchtung und die labyrinthischen Qualitäten spielen auf die paläolithische Höhlenkunst an und stellen das Kunst schaffen und die Poesie im Allgemeinen in ein Kontinuum mit geologischem Druck. Seine verfremdenden Aspekte erinnern uns an unsere gemeinsamen, entstehenden und unleserlichen Ursprünge.
Durch die Betonung von Kräften statt von Absichten und die Gegenüberstellung des Belebten mit dem Unbelebten schafft Lyon einen Raum, in dem die Rolle der Kunst und des technologischen Fortschritts als gemeinsame Facetten dauerhafter natürlicher Prozesse betrachtet werden können: resistent gegen traditionelle Methoden der verkenntnistheoretischen Untersuchung, von Natur aus komplex, numinos, fantastisch und okkult.
17.11.2023 - 1.30.2024
Project 2023
Images from exhibition
฿l^¢к βθж - ฿l^¢к Ħσl£
Find us:
appointments only please e mail us info@mathiaskessler.com
Address
Lange Strasse 31 / 1st Floor
60311 Frankfurt am Main
Germany