Galerie Barbara Thumm in Berlin opened two exhibitions on the same evening, 6 November, with an opening reception from 6 to 9pm. In the first space, Peter Bonde presents “New Paintings (keep on keeping on)”, his second solo show with the gallery; in the second, Anna Jung Seo presents “Drunken Boat”, her first exhibition in Berlin. Both run through 19 December.

Bonde, who has painted for more than four decades, returns to the motifs, methods and materials that have defined his career, reworking them rather than starting afresh. His new paintings move between total abstraction and outright figuration: fast, layered brushstrokes in some works, photographs pushing through the paint in others, and rooms and interiors that feel remembered rather than observed. The title speaks of persistence — it is too late to stop, so one carries on.

The show’s deadpan centrepiece is a pair of “Cool Paintings”, each assembled from smaller paintings on mirror foil that together form a figure, with a large air-conditioning unit mounted above — the same model as the one in Bonde’s own studio. The joke has a serious edge: painting, for Bonde, is an object that hangs, hums and takes up space, exchanging air with its surroundings. Bonde graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1982, taught there as professor from 1996 to 2005, and represented Denmark at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 alongside Jason Rhoades.

Jung Seo, born in Seoul in 1964 and living in London, makes her Berlin debut with intimately drawn scenes lit by moonlight or a midnight lamp. Her new paintings take their cue from literature — Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry and the novels of Roberto Bolaño — reflecting her early training in French literature and her enduring interest in storytelling. Curated by Augusto Arbizo, the show moves between the remembered and the imagined, its saturated colours and figures redolent with longing, regret and the complexity of human connection.