THE ARMORY SHOW 2026
WILLEHAD EILERS
SEPTEMBER 24 - 27, 2026
DROSTE GALLADÉ x MANAGEMENT
BOOTH P52 – PRESENTS SECTION
For his first presentation at the Armory Show, German artist Willehad Eilers (b. 1981, Germany; lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands) presents a new series of paintings that extends and reconfigures a body of work developed over the past years.
Eilers’ paintings examine the ambivalent conditions of Western affluence: a world of material abundance in which the absence of fundamental needs does not necessarily produce freedom, but instead turns attention inward—toward self-optimization, self-realization and the continuous construction of the self. As Eilers puts it, it is the “wallowing of pigs in paradise”: a condition in which comfort and excess coexist with a persistent sense of dissatisfaction.
In his presented series this tension unfolds within recurring settings of the contemporary city and the office. Working with a restrained palette, Eilers places his figures in environments that appear familiar yet strangely alienating. Skyscrapers and interiors become more than backdrops; they embody systems constructed around human life while leaving little space for the vulnerable, instinctive body at their center. The city emerges as a world built on top of the natural one to which we originally belonged. Eilers’ figures appear as souls trapped inside oversized human bodies, searching for ways to touch, communicate and connect. Violence and tenderness exist side by side, often becoming impossible to distinguish. Basic human desires—for warmth, nourishment, love and belonging—become entangled in increasingly complex social and economic structures. Even gestures driven by good intentions can produce suffering.
Humor, exaggeration and irony have long been central to Eilers’ practice. Beneath the seemingly cheerful or absurd surfaces of his scenes lies a more unsettling question: what happens when the promise of a fulfilled life itself becomes a system of expectations? In a culture saturated by images of success, leisure and self-realization, the individual is left with the seemingly endless task of optimizing the self. Eilers’ paintings expose the tension between this promise and the vulnerability of the human being who is expected to fulfil it.
Eilers graduated from the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2010. His work has been presented internationally at institutions including the Jan Cunen Museum, Concordia, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin and the Venice Biennale. His work is held in public and private collections including Lisser Art Museum, the Hunting Group Collection, the Green Family Collection and Colección SOLO. Since 2018, he has regularly published his zines The Horse Diaries.
