Irish-German artist Paul Hutchinson has been selected for the prestigious Artsy Vanguard 2026, recognizing his decade-long practice exploring themes of inequality, urban life, and social mobility through photography, text, and performance. The Berlin-based artist's work captures the cultural codes of youth and the roughness of urban experience, translating his observations into powerful visual narratives that have caught the attention of major collectors and institutions worldwide.
Hutchinson's Berlin studio serves as a testament to his evolving practice, filled with objects and works that trace his artistic development. Among his most significant pieces is "Vorwärts" (2017), a print featuring his worn black Reebok sneaker with its side seam split from two harsh winters. "For me, that piece was key to understanding my own practice," Hutchinson explained. "There's everything I want to convey in my practice: the culture I come from, the clothing and codes of youth culture, the roughness of growing up here—it's carrying all of that inside."
The artist's growing recognition is evident in recent exhibitions and acquisitions. Last year marked a significant milestone with his first Paris solo show, "Hues," at Bremond Capela, which represents him alongside Knust Kunz Gallery Editions and Sies & Höke. His work "red glow" (2022) was purchased by the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, this past September, while he currently has pieces in "Where to? Kunsthalle/City/Society of the Future" at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. A new show at The Blanc in New York is scheduled for later this month.
Much of Hutchinson's artistic communication has been channeled through books, particularly last year's catalogue "Remnants. Selected Works 2019-2024." This collection features photographs of graffiti remains he discovered in Berlin's extensive transit system, transforming chipped paint and layered tags into abstraction and a powerful metaphor for the city's sanitization of self-expression. "I realized they're about trying to scrape subculture away, and it still resists—there's still some leftovers," he observed.
As a native Berliner, Hutchinson has witnessed firsthand the gradual erosion of his city's historic subculture, with cultural budgets being slashed while rents and living costs soar. This urban transformation inspired "Stadt für Alle (City for All)" (2020), which he jokingly called "the ugliest book [he's] ever done" during a recent studio visit. The series presents images of cranes, excavators, and construction sites transforming Berlin's urban landscape, remaining one of his most personally significant works. "There's a German term called Machtarchitektur, [meaning] architecture of power or authority. It's solely about feeling pushed out of a city—pushing me out, my family out, all of my friends out."
Hutchinson's socioeconomic awareness was shaped by his 1990s upbringing in northern Schöneberg, a rough West Berlin neighborhood still reeling from the city's reunification aftermath. Growing up working class, his time was divided between "smoking [and] causing trouble on the streets" and listening to live music in his parents' raucous Irish pub. These contrasting environments helped forge his identity, but it was a funding program for low-income students that set him on his artistic path.
A study abroad program brought Hutchinson to Valencia, Spain, where he discovered photography in the school's lab. "People were going to the beach and I was stuck in the darkroom," he recalled. Photography captivated him because "although you're making images that depict something that's there, if you get it right, they can also depict what's in you." Upon returning to Berlin, his world opened up as he began experimenting with photography and traveling, relying on scholarships and grants.
"I feel so privileged having had that curiosity about stuff in my late teens and early twenties. I went all over the world and looked at shit, and that really has made me the person I am today," he reflected. His adventures included working with Magnum photographer Steve McCurry in New York in 2010 and living abroad in Rio de Janeiro. However, his most transformative period may have been studying photography at Central Saint Martins in London.
"Before going to Britain, I didn't really know what capitalism meant," he admitted. "After two years there, I saw it oozing out of everything. It made me sick." Like many struggling art students, he took a dead-end job at Zara on Bond Street before a cold email to Wolfgang Tillmans landed him work helping design the photographer's books. Though formative, this era became financially unsustainable after graduation, prompting his return to Berlin in 2014.
The decade since returning home has seen Hutchinson settle into himself while experimenting with new media. His first major departure from pure photography came in 2018 with "Texte und Bilder" and "Pictures & Words"—two distinct versions of the same image set featuring original texts in German or English respectively. Layering writing atop photographs proved liberating, but the image quality was equally crucial. "I'd taken that step and left behind a very conservative, pristine way of image-making," he recalled. "When making this book, I thought: That's what I want to speak about. The beauty of grainy culture and gritty roughness, and the beauty and the problems I see in it."
In recent years, Hutchinson has ventured into performance, transforming texts into sound pieces and readings that utilize his lilting Irish accent. "The vocalization of the writing really feels like part of my work by now," he explained while searching his laptop for recordings of his two-part performance piece "Innere Stadt (City Within)" (2025). The work's second section directly addresses the city's plan to slash 130 million euros ($152.8 million) from arts and culture funding in 2025, asking: "Do you really believe what you're being told? There's no waiting around where we're from. Time to step up and call out what's wrong."
The charged performance reflects Hutchinson's lived reality as he juggles the pressures of being a working artist during a cost-of-living crisis. "I'm not in it for the money, but if you have a child and a studio and rent to pay, you do have to think about it," he said. "But on the other hand, I'm naively optimistic." While money and power concerns remain present, Hutchinson doesn't see his art as communicating grand statements. "I don't think I can speak any truths because there are no truths in that way. It's just my lived experience. It's what I've been through, what made me who I am, what I was born into."
Though his personal experiences often edge into the political, Hutchinson's aim extends beyond critique to invite contemplation of reality itself. "One thing I feel touched by and inspired by that gets overlooked is a sense of wonder for the everyday; a sense of wonder for this place we live in." His selection for The Artsy Vanguard 2026, now in its eighth year of highlighting promising artists, positions him among ten talents poised to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture.
