what holds, what leaks

exhibition views, works by Diogo da Cruz and Lu Cheng at Kunstverein Augsburg

Splashdown 2026, fiberglass, 60 x 40 x 400 cm

Collaborative pieces with Lu Cheng
left: After the Overflow 2026, ceramic and steel, 240 x 240 x 200 cm
right: Biber 2026 ceramic and steel, 220 x 220 x 150 cm

chaetosisters 2025 (I & II), ceramic and steel, 240 × 70 × 75 cm , 160 × 60 × 90 cm

messengers from the deep 2026, aluminium, ca. 80 x 80 x 120 cm each

With What Holds, What Leaks, Lu Cheng and Diogo da Cruz present a site-specific duo exhibition at Kunstverein Augsburg that engages with permeability, stability, and transformation. In a collaborative working phase, both artists developed a hybrid, processual structure of ceramic and steel.

The exhibition unfolds as a spatial ensemble that understands itself as an open system: a structure that bears and yields, that condenses and dissolves again. Organic and architectural logics interpenetrate one another — fragile ceramic elements meet load-bearing metal scaffolds and branch into biomorphic formations.

While Lu Cheng develops bodily, growing structures, Diogo da Cruz constructs speculative, aquatically inflected ecosystems in which alternative forms of coexistence become visible. A sound work moves through the space, connecting the collaborative work to the acoustic reality of the city: condensed, filtered, and modulated recordings of water held back and released — among them from Augsburg's Hochablass — translate holding and permeability into urban flows, making them perceptible as an audible layer.

What gives structure, what escapes control? Which forms preserve, which let through? In the exhibition, material appears not as static substance but as an active carrier of relationships. The exhibition thus becomes a temporary ecosystem that continuously transforms in the interplay of space, material and audience.

With Augsburg as the exhibition site, the project gains an additional resonance: the city's historically rooted yet living water system — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019 — forms a context in which questions of circulation and ecological entanglement take on particular urgency.

text by Christian Thöner
photos by Sebastian Bühler

2026