Looking Back: Enter Art Fair 2026
With Lisette Schumacher, Karen van de Vliet and Vera Klaus
From 27 to 30 August, Root Gallery presented work by Lisette Schumacher, Karen van de Vliet and Vera Klaus at Enter Art Fair in Copenhagen. This was the gallery’s third participation in the fair. The selection brought together three artists whose paintings begin from different points of departure, giving the presentation its focus.
Lisette Schumacher: translating a landscape
Schumacher’s Coachella Views originate in her observations of the California desert. The paintings do not set out to reproduce a particular view. Instead, she rearranges what she has seen into abstract compositions in which distance, scale and spatial relationships remain perceptible. The landscape is a point of departure; the painting becomes a way of examining how it is seen and remembered.
Karen van de Vliet: directing an open process
Van de Vliet’s Translucency paintings develop through encounters between materials with different physical properties. Stains and traces emerge during the process, then become part of a composition through the artist’s decisions. Her work holds a precise tension between direction and contingency: Van de Vliet shapes the painting while allowing the behaviour of its materials to affect its outcome.
Vera Klaus: a motif without a fixed narrative
In Klaus’s Dreams and Hope series, recurring arched forms give the paintings a recognisable structure. They may suggest landscape or shelter, but do not resolve into a single subject. Through repetition and variation, the motif remains open, allowing the image to move between recognition and abstraction.
The selection in the booth
The presentation was not organised around a shared subject. Its coherence came from the different ways the artists develop an image: from observed landscape, from the interaction of materials, and from the return of a recurring form. The works remained distinct, while their placement allowed these approaches to be read in relation to one another. As the fair progressed, the presentation held together in the space as intended and gave rise to sustained conversations with visitors and collectors.
The response to Enter Art Fair 2026
The presentation received a strong response from collectors, and the works shown from Karen van de Vliet’s Translucency series sold out during the fair. Enter Art Fair 2026 marked Root Gallery’s third participation in Copenhagen. We thank everyone who visited our booth and spent time with the work of Lisette Schumacher, Karen van de Vliet and Vera Klaus.
