DOHA.- Qatar Museums today announced the creation of Doha Pavilion: Gerhard Richter, a new permanent, site-specific structure conceived by the world-renowned artist. Doha Pavilion has been designed by Gerhard Richter as a free-standing work of art and architecture housing a distinct body of his paintings and sculpture. Selldorf Architects worked with the artist to realise his vision for the project, which will be located in Doha’s MIA Park, the expansive public space outside the Museum of Islamic Art. Doha Pavilion will be unveiled on 20 November 2026 on the eve of the opening of Rubaiya Qatar, the nation’s new contemporary art quadrennial.
Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums said, “Qatar’s ambitious programme of public art installations has been developed through our relationships with outstanding figures in contemporary art. It is an extraordinary pleasure now to work with an artist recognised as one of the greatest of his generation, Gerhard Richter, whose unprecedented Doha Pavilion enriches both our public artworks and the international cultural landscape.”
Gerhard Richter said, “My trip to Doha in 2013 came two years into developing my Strip paintings, and the city’s architecture and history sparked an idea for a pavilion that could unite the thematic threads of that body of work. The Pavilion’s exterior features decorative tiles based on the Patterns that first led me to the Strips. Inside, Strip paintings hang alongside Mirrors, and the Strip Tower is installed centrally within. Doha is the right place and the only place for my Pavilion.”
With a career spanning from the 1960s to the present, Gerhard Richter has pursued a diverse and influential practice that has explored and expanded the formal and conceptual possibilities of art and the ways in which we relate to images. His vast body of work, which includes paintings, objects, installations, works on paper, editions, and photographic documentation, is grounded in deeply nuanced investigations of history, memory, and perception.
Richter’s Doha Pavilion is a hexagonal structure that unites several of the most significant threads of his longstanding inquiry into the nature of visual representation. The pavilion’s six exterior walls are clad in repeating patterns composed on printed panels. These patterns relate to Richter’s 2011 artist’s book Patterns, which documented the creative process behind his well-known series of Strip paintings, which he began the same year. Together, the walls translate these digitally derived compositions into a new architectural format, expanding Richter’s uniquely analytical and experimental approach to painting—and to perception—into three dimensions.
The pattern on each of the pavilion’s six exterior walls is created through a meticulously calculated process. In 2010, Richter divided a digital image of his Abstract Painting (724-4), 1990 into 2 vertical strips. He then further subdivided these into 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, and finally 8192 strips. Each strip is mirrored and repeated, resulting in a horizontal, symmetrical pattern. Both the mathematical process and resulting patterning recall the carefully constructed geometries of Islamic art, where interlaced arabesques and endlessly repeating tiles dazzle the eye and act as windows into the spiritual world.
On the interior walls of the pavilion hang three large-scale Strip paintings by Richter, which take the above process to its logical conclusion. They transform the original abstract painting’s complex surface into a series of thin horizontal strips, each representing a slice of the original photograph exactly 0.08 millimetre wide. Infinitely more divisions are possible, but they would become indistinguishable to the naked eye. At the centre of the pavilion is a tripartite Strip Tower, which transposes these paintings into the medium of freestanding sculpture, and which Richter designed specifically for this structure.
Between the Strip paintings are two large Mirrors, part of a body of work begun by the artist in the 1980s. These two floor-to-ceiling mirrors are mounted on the pavilion’s narrow walls, allowing them to reflect the interior, including the artworks and viewers, creating the sense of an endless space that changes with the movement of its visitors. The Mirrors are positioned here as a literal reflection, or meditation, on painting and image-making.
A final element—a stone sculpture, titled Brunnen (Well)—is situated directly outside the pavilion.
Annabelle Selldorf said, “It is an uncommon honour to assist Gerhard Richter in realising his vision for this project—a major addition to his endlessly probing and fascinating body of work—as well as a privilege to contribute to Doha’s extraordinary ensemble of contemporary architecture. I am grateful to Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa, to Gerhard Richter, and to the entire project team at Qatar Museums.”
Rubaiya Qatar, the nation’s new international visual arts quadrennial, will take place from 21 November 2026 through 30 April 2027. Centred on overarching themes of global ecology, water’s political and geographic importance, and the maritime heritage that links Qatar to the world, the inaugural edition brings together exhibitions and public art installations featuring more than 50 regional and international artists with particular attention to artists from outside the Western Hemisphere, 25 new commissions and 6 public art installations. The multidisciplinary quadrennial aims to inspire and empower new generations of artists and thinkers, with the dynamic cultural hub of Qatar as their platform. It will unfold across multiple sites in Doha, including the newly renovated ALRIWAQ Arts + Architecture building, the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Katara QM Gallery, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and in public sites across the country.
