Oscar Enberg: Works on paper
Holy Fool (small man on big boy knee), 2026
Watercolour, graphite, oil and ink on collaged paper, framed
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
Produced during Oscar Enberg's Fürstenberg Contemporary residency at Heiligenberg Castle in the summer of 2026, this suite of five unique works on paper imagines the artist in residence as a court fool, realized in watercolour, graphite and ink on paper.
Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (Freiherr), 2026
Watercolour, graphite and ink on paper
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
€1.800 (excl. tax)
This work is sold in a bespoke walnut frame, fitted with UV-protective museum glass.
Holy Fool (Freiherr), 2026 (detail)
"If, as Paul Klee suggests, the act of drawing is simply taking a line for a walk, such a walk in Heiligenberg might extend to the tracing of checkered stone hallways and the gentle frottaging of centuries old walls… That line might turn itself in knots and start to resemble a face… A prince or Holy fool… The Janus face."
– Oscar Enberg
Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (fool's errand), 2026
Watercolour, graphite and ink on paper
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
€1.800 (excl. tax)
This work is sold in a bespoke walnut frame, fitted with UV-protective museum glass.
Holy Fool (fool's errand), 2026 (detail)
Oscar Enberg
Oscar Enberg’s sculpture and painting practice is preoccupied with the ways in which class and taste are distilled in objects. Drawing from both official and anecdotal histories, with a particular interest in the domestic and diminutive, Enberg creates work that emerges from a distinctly continental milieu. Across an idiosyncratic and often times arcane studio-based practice, the artist muses on the perversions of class, conservatism and tradition. Engaging with longstanding and increasingly precarious modes of ‘Handwerk’, and regularly collaborating with craftspeople and artisans, Enberg’s work is at once recognisable and strange, operating in the uncanny between the mundane and perverse.
View of Oscar Enberg's studio, Heiligenberg Castle, 2026, Courtesy of the artist
Educated at the Canterbury University Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, Oscar Enberg (b. 1988 in Christchurch, New Zealand) lives and works in Berlin.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Fürstenberg Museum, Donaueschingen (2027 upcoming); Crèvecœur, Paris (2026 upcoming); Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington (2026); Super Super Markt, Berlin; Heidi, Berlin; BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne (all 2025); Peles, Berlin (2024 with Daniel Sinsel); The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Mackintosh Lane, London (2022 with Nigin Beck); Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington (2022); Mossman, Wellington; Stadium, Berlin; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (all 2019); Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland (2018); Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (2017); and North Sculpture Terrace, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland (2016).
Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (the fall of man), 2026
Watercolour, graphite and varnish on paper
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
€1.800 (excl. tax)This work is sold in a bespoke walnut frame, fitted with UV-protective museum glass.
Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (small man on big boy knee), 2026
Watercolour, graphite, oil and ink on collaged paper
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
€1.800 (excl. tax)This work is sold in a bespoke walnut frame, fitted with UV-protective museum glass.
"I have been searching for a form that is able to exist without metaphor… at the very least, a form whose throat is so full with association that it has no more room for imposed metaphorical flourishes. The button, or Knopf in German, is at once sophisticated and dumb, ubiquitous and highly specific, symbolic and precious, and cheap and disposable. The button is a little like the holy fool, a sort of witness to everything."
– Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (Jungmann mit Eid), 2026 (detail)
Oscar Enberg
Holy Fool (Jungmann mit Eid), 2026
Watercolour, graphite, oil and ink on paper
68 x 50 cm
26¾ x 19⅔ inches
€1.800 (excl. tax)
This work is sold in a bespoke walnut frame, fitted with UV-protective museum glass.