For her exhibition Pandora Papers Issel worked for the first time with a material that is very rarely found in contemporary art: felt. It is created by rubbing combed virgin wool. The fibers are formed into a durable bond by the microscopic platelets on the surface of the animal hair getting caught together. Issel forms colorful, comic-like images with the self-rolled felt, which are then fixed on a solid support material, either directly on the wall or on canvases stretched over stretcher frames.

The total of thirteen felt pictures in the exhibition have titles such as “First Cousins,” “One Hand Washes the Other,” “Drinking Brothers,” and “Seilschaft VII” and have been related to each other by the artist in a complex spatial installation. The supporting motifs are shadowy, black shapes on the walls and floor of the exhibition room as well as rope or tube-shaped structures, which also partially respond to elements of the picture frames.

At first glance, the arrangement appears playful and colorful. It operates on a material-iconographic level with childlike associations as felt pictures are mostly found in kindergartens, schools and craft courses. This is largely due to their haptic qualities. Felt pictures want to be touched and caressed. But that’s not possible with Verena Issel’s work. In addition, there are serious topics hidden behind the fluffy surface of the pictures.

For Verena Issel, art is a method to see and understand the world ­differently. Her humor, which is effective on all levels, is ultimately subversive. For Issel, the matting process necessary to produce the image material is a metaphor for social connections. The legendary “Berlin felt” (an ­expression for corrupt businesses) between the construction industry and politics in times of high subsidies was her starting point for thinking about all kinds of “unclean” human ­entanglements. On this simultaneously abstract and very concrete level, she is concerned with interweaving society with structures of power.

The title of the exhibition refers to the largest leak to date about so-called tax havens and names the most effective means against corruption and the shadow economy, namely an independent judiciary and journalism.

☐ Marc Wellman