As the oldest remaining structures of humankind, sacred buildings are powerful testaments to the universal nature of faith beyond time and space. The five world religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – emerged at different times and in different places, yet all devote themselves to a shared theme: the contemplation of a transcendent world.

In “The Shimmer of Time”, Brunn presents only sacred buildings located in Germany, each associated with one of the five world religions. Despite the thousands of years and kilometers separating these religions from their places of origin, communities exist here that have translated their symbolism into architectural form.

The Dharmic and Abrahamic religions are arranged in groups of five from left to right, according to their historical emergence: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. With a strictly central-perspective composition and gently filtered light, Brunn emphasizes the symmetry of the buildings and the presence of their deities. Through the serial arrangement, recurring aesthetic elements that have inscribed themselves into the collective unconscious of humanity over millennia are revealed.

Following the tradition of the Prussian church photographers, Brunn uses an 8×10-inch large-format camera, producing handmade contact prints from the negatives to ensure a lossless image rendering. The high resolution and subtle tonal gradations of the prints allow for the study of the dense and timeless symbolism in each sacred structure down to the finest detail.

The exhibition catalogue contains all 21 prints presented in the exhibition and a foreword by André Kirchner as well as detailed information on Brunn’s printing process.

About the Artist

Maximilian Brunn is a Berlin-based artist who combines analog photographic techniques with a conceptual approach. From a philosophically agnostic perspective, he selects subjects that float in an undefinable space between past, present, and future embodying the notion of timelessness or infinity.

Brunn works exclusively with an 8×10-inch large-format camera and produces platinum-based prints on ultra-thin, handmade Japanese paper through a time-intensive process. The Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is among the key influences on his work. During a five-year stay in Japan, Brunn trained as a photographer and assisted, among others, architectural photographer Peter M. Cook in Tokyo. His work has been exhibited at the 2023 Month of Photography in St. Thomas Church, Berlin-Kreuzberg, and in 2024 at Culterim Gallery Berlin. In 2025, the catalog for the exhibition “Artificial Romanticism” was published.

Friday, Jan 16, 2026, 5 – 8 pm
Opening reception

Saturday, Feb 7, 2026, 5 pm
Artist Talk (de)

Saturday, Feb 28, 2026, 4 – 7 pm
Finissage