Beneath the Surface: Rothschild's Undercurrents at Hastings Contemporary
This summer, Hastings Contemporary opens its doors to Undercurrents, the first major UK solo exhibition by Argentinian-born, Berlin-based artist Miguel Rothschild. Running from until 13 September 2026, the show is a fitting match for a gallery that sits directly on the beach, its windows facing the restless surface of the sea, a surface Rothschild reimagines throughout as something threaded and stitched.
Rothschild has spent more than two decades exploring the duality of water: its shimmering surface and the dense world beneath. Working across film, photography, drawing and large-scale installation, he layers materials, glass, thread, fishing line, fabric, with careful tension into impossible dioramas. The results catch the eye with drama and movement before unravelling slightly, revealing something more fragile underneath.
Miguel Rothschild, De Profundis, 2018 print on fabric, fishing line, lead balls, 900 x 800 x 400 cm
A highlight is From the Depths of the Sea (2026), a site-specific installation created for the gallery. A vast photographic image of the ocean is printed onto cloth and suspended by a rain of fishing lines, becoming something closer to a hung curtain of fabric. The surface ripples as if mid-wave, catching light and shadow as it shifts with the viewer's movement, the image and the textile beneath it almost indistinguishable. Yet a row of sinker weights anchors the textile in place, holding the piece steady. Rothschild calls it a "floating silence", capturing the tension between the cloth's constant movement and the stillness that supports it, much as fabric might billow while its hem stays pinned.
Miguel Rothschild, Mar de Ausencias (detail), 2017.
Alongside this, the show includes expanded photographic works such as Ocean Crack (2026) and Sea of Absence (2017). Here, sheets of safety glass over photographic images have been deliberately shattered, the cracks following the rhythm of waves like seams or fraying threads across the surface. Light catches in these fractures, scattering glimmers and shadows across each image as if along the folds of fabric, drawing viewers in even as it exposes the work's fragility.
Miguel Rothschild, Elegy, 2017, print on fabric, fishing line, lead balls, epoxy, acrylic, 300 x 550 x 280 cm.
For Rothschild, this is about more than spectacle. "In these works I wanted to confront two dimensions of the sea: the luminous, seductive surface, and the silent, dense, vulnerable depths," he explains. "The ocean reveals and conceals itself in equal measure." He hopes viewers leave with a renewed sense that what we see is only ever a fragment of what's really there, and that caring for our oceans means looking beyond the surface.
Miguel Rothschild, Elegy (detail), 2017, print on fabric, fishing line, lead balls, epoxy, acrylic, 300 x 550 x 280 cm.
Kathleen Soriano, Director of Hastings Contemporary, notes how Rothschild's fragmenting of his subject matter makes it both clearer and more mysterious at once. This summer, his work shares the gallery with new paintings by Janaina Tschäpe, offering two contrasting responses to the sea under one roof.
Born in 1963 and trained in Buenos Aires before settling in Berlin, Rothschild has exhibited across Europe, Asia and South America, with work held in collections including the State Museums of Berlin and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. Undercurrents marks a rare chance to see his work up close, in a setting that could hardly be more apt.
. . .
Further Information:
Undercurrents by Miguel Rothschild is on show now until 13 September 2026 at Hastings Contemporary.
-
-
Read more about textiles and the role of water in Selvedge Issue 131, Flow.
. . .
Image Credits:
Lead: Miguel Rothschild, Elegy (detail), 2017, print on fabric, fishing line, lead balls, epoxy, acrylic, 300 x 550 x 280 cm.
All further images courtesy of Hastings Contemporary and as credited in captions.