Body Without Organs
David Czupryn, Antonia Freisburger, Witalij Frese, Allan Ghandi
31.1.- 28.2 2026
What remains when everything has been removed
At the start of 2026, Galerie Droste is presenting the group exhibition Body without
Organs, bringing together artists David Czupryn, Antonia Freisburger, Witalij Frese, and
Allan Gandhi. The concept of the body without organs is one of the major themes
theorized by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in France in
the 1970s and 1980s. Together, they borrowed from an idea actually developed by poet
and theater theorist Antonin Artaud, notably in his book Pour en finir avec le jugement
de Dieu. As the title of this book suggests, it deals profoundly with the question of
liberation. The body without organs represents a way of developing tools that help us
break free from dominant models and think and desire differently. It is physical pain, for
Artaud, that gives rise to this desire for an immortal body, sheltered from illness and
death. For Deleuze, desire is neither a lack nor a frustration: as anti-Freudian as possible,
desire produces connections between elements; it is a positive factor, emancipatory
both individually and collectively.
If we think about the concept of a body without organs without any philosophical
approach, but rather by thinking only with images, the concept can lead us to two things:
the natural death of an organism deprived of its internal machinery, or, more plastically
and poetically, the ever-changing path toward greater freedom of the imagination, an
escape toward unrestrained expression and the disappearance of heavy constraints.
The four artists in this exhibition all have in common the fact that they treat the body as
malleable matter rather than as a defined and fixed object. While corporality remains
central to their work, it is not in a biological way, but rather tends toward symbolism,
hybridity, emotion, and fluidity. It challenges physicality in order to better address the
concept of constant transformation. This hybridity is clearly evident in David Czupryn's
paintings, which depict human bodies whose fate never seems immutable. Surrounded
by details that speak volumes about the complexity and numerous networks of our
journeys, they are perceptible but almost ghostly, allowing the imaginary to prevail over
the organic. The same applies to the works of Antonia Freisburger, which focus primarily
on places and unconscious spheres that are connected by energies—energies that,
without being explicitly described as human, can be understood as interactions between
thoughts or states of consciousness in constant flux. Her works resemble brain cells or
organs, evoking electrons connected to each other in space, referring both to human
networks and the universe, and revealing a dizzying dimension of invisibility. In general,
the strange yet familiar forms created by these four artists suggest an infinite dialogue
that, through their repeated and independent movements or their apparent fleetingness,
begins to resemble a dance.
Once again, to define the concept, we are talking about the corps acte (body in action),
and Deleuze and Artaud often refer to choreography. According to the latter, we must
“make the human anatomy dance.” This may bring to mind the dancing bodies in Pina
Bausch's creations, which, according to Alain Mons, are treated “essentially as
apparitions, unexpected and wild surges.” For the choreographer, bodies are seen as
translators of the most vivid, buried, beautiful, or painful emotions, so much so that one
might think one is watching destinies dance rather than bodies forced to perform an
exercise. The use of repetition and carefully studied scenography gives her work an aura
that is as sculptural as it is pictorial, encouraging us to consider the body in a different
light. In this sense, Witalij Frese's sculptures also respond to the potential for permanent
recomposition, fragmented, dancing, and vulnerable. The appearance of certain pieces,
with their ancestral and almost votive look, recalls the quest for spirituality and
transcendence that Artaud associates with the body without organs. In Allan Gandhi's
work, the technique of flat color and the choice of colors, reminiscent of some of the
Nabis' work, invite a freedom that ultimately seems inevitable in order to express the
truth of a sensation. In his creative process, the painter sometimes uses a specific
sewing method to expand his own canvas, his own idea, and his field of possibilities. For
these four artists, change is continuous, open, and obvious.
Finally, it would be interesting to draw a comparison with one of the most celebrated
British painters of his time, Francis Bacon, whom Deleuze also discussed in his Logic of
Sensation. The philosopher is interested in the painter because his portraits and self-
portraits seem to depict this body deprived of structures that would allow it to function
perfectly. Or perhaps it is because psychological pain and the search for interiority and
intensity have gone so far that he has become the artist of the body without organs par
excellence. In any case, Czupryn, Freisburger, Frese, and Gandhi all develop this idea of
emancipation from a constricting straitjacket. And if there is something that links them,
in addition to this liberation, this quest, this dance, it is the great dynamism and disarming
instability of these identities that assert themselves elsewhere than in their frozen
appearance.
Laure Saffroy-Lepesqueur