Daniel M.E. Schaal

Daniel M.E. Schaal (born 1990 in Crailsheim, near Stuttgart) lives and works in Berlin. His practice spans painting, printmaking, weaving, and performance, and is rooted in an attentive engagement with material and process. Schaal received his MFA from Universität der Künste, Berlin. Recent exhibitions include A Single Man at Galerie Norbert Arns, the UdK Berlin Art Award, BOAZ.InP.RE_(T) at Kulturhaus Centre Bagatelle, Four Levels of Care at Kino International, and Nicht das Fell Berühren at LAGE EGAL, all in Berlin.

Daniel M.E. Schaal’s artistic practice is characterized by an attentive engagement with material, process, and repetition. He often works with discarded packaging, cardboard, and worn textiles—materials shaped by use and neglect. His interest in the thrown-away is rooted in a fascination with the stories embedded in everyday objects and their potential to be transformed into abstract, tactile structures. Repetition is a key strategy across his work in weaving, painting, and printmaking, functioning as a self-defined system that structures both the making process and the viewer’s experience. 

Printmaking, especially etching, is yet another way for Schaal’s to explore memory and material. In the series The Memory of Things, he uses an old personal scarf as a printing matrix, bringing textile processes into dialogue with graphic techniques. This body of work unfolds through the sub-series The Read, The Search, and The Trapped, each examining different aspects of remembrance. In The Search, memory is treated as fluid and unstable, expressed through nuanced variations of blue ranging from turquoise to deep ultramarine and violet. Subtle intersections of line reveal the white of the paper beneath, creating moments of light that suggest fleeting clarity within the act of remembering.