THE URBAN SKIN

June 1, 2026
by Lux

Pietro Ruffo / Jan Bauer

4 July – 18 October 2026
URBAN NATION Project Space
Bülowstraße 97, 10783 Berlin

Opening events:
Artist talk at the Embassy of Italy in Berlin: Thursday, 2 July 2026, 6pm
Exhibition opening: Friday, 3 July 2026, 7 pm

A project by
Stiftung Berliner Leben / URBAN NATION Museum for Urban Contemporary Art

Curated by
Janine Arndt, Chiara Zampetti Egidi

Patronage
Under the patronage of the Embassy of Italy in Berlin.

Artist talk at the Embassy of Italy in Berlin featuring artists Pietro Ruffo (second from left) and Jan Bauer (third from left), curators Janine Arndt (center) and Chiara Zampetti (second from right), and Alfonso Tagliaferri, Cultural Counselor at the Italian Embassy in Berlin (right). (Click here to view the report on the embassy’s website.), Photo: Embassy of Italy in Berlin

About the exhibition

THE URBAN SKIN considers architecture as a living surface: shaped by time, political systems, use, memory, weathering, erosion and human intervention. Walls, façades, ruins and urban fragments appear
not as neutral backdrops, but as readable bodies. They show how cities remember, how they change and how history remains visible in matter.

The exhibition brings together the Italian artist Pietro Ruffo and the German artist Jan Bauer. Both understand architecture not as a static object, but as a carrier of historical, political, ecological and cultural meaning. Their works invite visitors to read the city and its surfaces as an archive: as a structure of layers, traces, ruptures and transformations.

Together, Ruffo and Bauer open up a dialogue between Rome and Berlin, antiquity and the present, monument and erosion. As a project at the URBAN NATION Project Space, THE URBAN SKIN combines art-historical, architectural and urban perspectives with the contemporary world of urban art. The exhibition broadens the perspective on street art and urban contemporary art: it is not just the image on the wall that matters, but the wall itself as a historical, social and political surface. It draws directly on Berlin’s history as a city of walls, firewalls, graffiti, posters, paintovers and temporary markings. The ideas drawn from the works of Pietro Ruffo and Jan Bauer are being actively developed further at the Resonance Laboratory.

Dr. Hans-Michael Brey, Chairman of the Board of the Berliner Leben Foundation, during his opening speech at the URBAN NATION Project Space on 3 July, 2026. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Artists Jan Bauer (left) and Pietro Ruffo (right) with the exhibition curators Janine Arndt (second from left) and Chiara Zampetti Egidi (second from right). Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors alongside Jan Bauer and Pietro Ruffo during the opening speeches. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
View of works by Jan Bauer. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Dr. Hans-Michael Brey, Chairman of the Board of the Berliner Leben Foundation (right) and Janine Arndt, exhibition curator, in conversation with Jens Rüberg, Fairnatic GmbH (left). Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors during the opening of the exhibition “THE URBAN SKIN.” Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Visitors in front of Jan Bauer’s Community Wall during the exhibition opening. Photo: Hirschberg Studios

Architecture as Memory

The title THE URBAN SKIN refers to the idea that the city possesses a surface that is never merely decorative. Like skin, it is exposed, vulnerable and responsive. It registers touch, bears scars and absorbs time.

In the exhibition, architecture becomes a medium through which cultural, historical, political and ecological processes become visible. Built structures appear not only as monuments or functional spaces, but as open archives: layered, unstable and constantly open to new readings.

Rome appears here as the paradigmatic city of layers: a place where ruins, monuments, power structures, nature and urban life interweave. Berlin enters as another, equally multilayered archive: shaped by ruptures, reconstruction, ideological surfaces, temporary uses and ongoing transformation. Between these two cities, THE URBAN SKIN unfolds an overarching question: How can urban surfaces help us understand history in the present?

Two Artistic Perspectives

Pietro Ruffo works with drawing, paper cut-outs and cartography. His works are composed of visual and semantic layers: geographical systems, landscapes, constellations and geometric orders overlap. In the context of THE URBAN SKIN, his practice opens up a historical and planetary perspective on architecture. The city appears as part of larger constellations of geological time, political imagination and collective memory.

Jan Bauer approaches architecture through close observation, attention to detail, and material sensitivity. His drawings and paintings focus on surfaces, fragments and archival structures. They ask what remains readable when images, buildings or documents are damaged, transformed or detached from their original context. In his work, the surface becomes a field of observation: precise, vulnerable and charged with time.

Pietro Ruffo: Antropocene 88 – oil and cutouts on paper laid on canvas, Photo: Giorgio Benni
Jan Bauer: Pantheon XVII – Charcoal drawing with watercolour washes; Photo: Jan Bauer
Pietro Ruffo: L’ultimo meraviglioso minuto Pantheon 2 – oil and cutouts on paper laid on canva; Photo: Giorgio Benni
Jan Bauer: Pantheon IV – Charcoal drawing with watercolour washes; Photo: Jan Bauer

Accompanying Formats

The exhibition is accompanied by two formats that transform the Project Space into a place for viewing, research and participation.

Resonance Laboratory
A curated reading and reference area brings together publications on architecture, Rome, Berlin, ruins, urban history, visual culture, ecology, memory and the Anthropocene. The Resonance Laboratory expands the exhibition into a space of deeper reflection and connects the artistic positions with broader cultural and theoretical contexts. It invites visitors to approach the visual questions of the exhibition through drawing, image analysis and practical experiments, and translates the idea of the urban surface into an accessible, action-oriented format. What emerges is a growing resonance archive that collects individual perceptions of Berlin. As a special historical reference point, five original etchings by Piranesi are presented in this space. Together with selected books and materials from URBAN NATION’s Martha Cooper Library, they serve as impulses for reflection, reading, writing and drawing.

“Colourful Faces of Antiquity” – Workshop with Jan Bauer
As part of the exhibition, Jan Bauer develops a workshop for children and young people that playfully translates the themes of the exhibition into their own visual practice. The starting point is the question: What did antiquity really look like? Many people still associate ancient sculptures with white marble. In fact, temples, statues and figures in antiquity were often painted in vivid colours.

Using faces of ancient sculptures from the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities as a starting point, participants create their own colourful portraits. With prepared linocut stencils, strong colours and simple
printing techniques, multilayered faces emerge between ancient sculpture, urban stencil, mask and contemporary character design. Just as urban surfaces bear traces of transformation and reinterpretation, the workshop invites participants to explore how our understanding of antiquity is shaped by changing historical perspectives and visual imaginaries.

Dates will be announced.

During the opening, artist Pietro Ruffo engages with visitors in the Resonance Lab., Photo: Hirschberg Studios
At the opening, visitors participate creatively in the Resonance Lab. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
Interactive station in the Resonance Lab. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
The Resonance Lab was developed with the kind support of the Marta Cooper Library. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
View from the exhibition into the Resonance Lab and the reading corner. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
View from the exhibition into the Resonance Lab. Photo: Hirschberg Studios
View from the Resonance Lab featuring prints by the Italian engraver and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). Photo: Hirschberg Studios