Margot Samel New York

For Liste 2026, Margot Samel presents a solo presentation by the Estonian painter Mariann Metsis (b. 1991, Tallinn, Estonia). Metsis’s work moves between perception, memory and performance, often through a process of wiping, reworking and returning to an image until it reaches a state that feels both familiar and unstable. Her paintings hold a sense of searching, as if the image is continually forming itself while also slipping away.

The installation at Liste is built as a horizontal sequence of paintings, all the same height. Arranged this way, the works read as a single line running through the booth, even as each painting interrupts or bends the flow. Metsis approaches the structure as a kind of fragmented Greek theater: episodic, and unresolved. The line is cut into scenes that feel connected but never settle into a complete narrative. Viewers move from one moment to the next as if following a script broken into fragments.

Mariann Metsis (b. 1991, Tallinn, Estonia) lives and works in London. She studied at Central Saint Martin College of Art & Design, London; The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; and received a BA in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Solo exhibitions include: Trauerspiele, Margot Samel, New York (2025); Bals des victimes, Deborah Schamoni, Munich, Germany (2024); Life under, Galerina, London, UK (2023); maalid2020, Hoib Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia (2020). Selected group exhibitions include The Apartment, Galerina, London, UK (2025); Shifting Sand, Galerija Asni, Riga, Latvia (2024); bending spines, curated by Antoine Simeao Schalk, Berlin, Germany (2023); High Stakes, Lisa Boudet, Paris, France (2023); just as when the night, Light Eye Mind, London, UK (2019); Paintings for the Temple of Love, Cob Gallery, London, UK (2019); and Cities Methodologies, Slade Research Centre, London, UK (2014).