The works of Conny Maier (lives and works in Berlin and Baleal) reflect on polarities like power and submission, equilibrium and instability, the human and the non-human. Recently awarded the Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year (2021), Maier is one of the foremost painters of her generation. As the curator and art historian Britta Faerber writes, "Maier's work speaks of the expulsion from paradise, of the loss of a primordial state, of a great, barely endurable malaise in the prevailing culture." Through depicting malleable figures in states of extreme emotion and struggle, Maier's works take an unflinching look at the final throes of the Anthropocene, asking not only what systems should come to an end but what our future might look like. The monograph Beautiful Disasters shows for the first time a cross-section of Maier's works. With essays by Martin Herbert, Kristian Vistrup Madsen, and Marlene A. Schenk.