NOT I

Capitain Petzel is pleased to announce the group exhibition NOT I, on view from January 9, 2026. For the staging of NOT I, a monologue which lends its name to this exhibition, Samuel Beckett stripped the theater stage, creating a barren visual field, where a striking pair of red lips, a character known as Mouth, floats in total darkness. Illuminated by a single beam of light and speaking at relentless speed, the monologue is delivered by a disembodied female voice. Both a cry of terror and recognition, NOT I is representative of a life glimpsed in flashes, a self seen fragmented, a memory that insists even as it slips away. It consists of associations, thematic returns and obsessive circling. The absence of linear narrative creates a manic circularity and movement without progress, pouring out involuntary memories. Mouth attempts to distance herself from recurring images and phrases heard long ago. The past resurfaces through speech that mimics the chaotic flow of recollection, where images erupt involuntarily, overlapping and repeating in an attempt to both grasp meaning and escape it.