In our series 3 and More Perspectives on a Piece, we elucidate selected works from very different points of view.
Video © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
Object: Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942, New York City, USA) uses language as his medium, expressing it in signs, words and sentences. Situating his work in the context of Sound Art, Ingrid Buschmann, curator of art and music, reads the artist’s work A Sound Grown Softer (Diminuendo) like the score for a sound event taking place live in the mind of the listener.
Length: 1:33 minutes
Object: The artist Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942, New York City, USA) perceives language as an actuality ‒ as a fact. For him, it wields the same weight as a stone that is worked by a sculptor. On the wall it takes on a physically experienceable, almost tangible existence. Based on his own perceptions, composer, musician and performance artist Frieder Butzmann sensually traces Weiner’s commentary about architecture, space and sound.
Object: Lawrence Weiner (1942 New York City, USA) is considered to be one of the fathers of Conceptual Art, which grew out of Minimalism in the 1960s. In this video contribution, artist and art educator Markus Strieder reacts to Lawrence Weiner’s “Statement of Intent”, published in 1968, a legendary artistic declaration of purpose, in which Weiner proclaimed that the production of a work of art is not necessarily bound to the artist, but instead must be understood as a function of its reception.
Pauline Curnier Jardin, winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019, is presenting the extensive video installation Fat to Ashes, which she produced for her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, in the historic halls of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. A large-scale amphitheatre encompasses the film installation as the centre of the spectacle, and thus transformations, processions, and practised performance in ritualised excess are the content and formal attributes of Pauline Curnier Jardin’s Fat to Ashes.
Length: 8:42 minutes
Hamburger Bahnhof is presenting Bunny Rogers’s installation Self Portrait as Clone of Jeanne D’Arc. The special exhibition is in recognition of the gift of the work by private donors as a token of their gratitude to Udo Kittelmann, the director of Nationalgalerie (National Gallery), who left his position at the end of October 2020. This key work by the American artist draws on personal and pop-culture references that reflect on the complexity of youthful femininity with its associated fears, intensity and narcissism.
In her works Bunny Rogers (b. 1990, Houston, Texas) plays with ideas of identity and deals with sensitivity and vulnerability as well as friendship and marginalisation. She is often inspired by characters from television series, video games and the internet. In her 15-part, large-format series Self Portrait as Clone of Jeanne D’Arc (2019), Rogers adapts the figure of Joan of Arc from the animation series Clone High, in which a school is populated by clones of historical figures. In the role of Joan of Arc’s alter ego, the artist presents herself in various situations in these images with their allusions to everyday life and popular culture, transforming the exhibition space into an atmospheric stage of emotions.
Length: 8:42 minutes
Xinyi Cheng (born 1989 in Wuhan, lives and works in Paris) was awarded the Baloise Art Prize in 2019. As with the previous two prize-winners, Sam Pulitzer and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, this award comes with an acquisition by the Baloise Group for the collection of the Nationalgalerie. In her first solo exhibition in a major museum, Cheng will be presenting around 30 paintings and 6 photographs in the Hamburger Bahnhof, including numerous new works.
Length: 3:04 Minutes
Length: 11:44 Minutes
On the 100th anniversary of Beuys’ birth the Hamburger Bahnhof is making language the focus of an exhibition that encompasses sculptures, drawings, installations, films, posters and documents from the collections of the Nationalgalerie, the Sammlung Marx, the Kupferstichkabinett and the Kunstbibliothek – including the cycle The secret block for a secret person in Ireland and the installation Das Kapital Raum 1970–1977.
Length: 0:45 Minutes
Production: MONA productions
Spaciously presented across more than 2,000 square metres in Hamburger Bahnhof’s Rieckhallen, the group exhibition Magical Soup features key works complemented by loans representing the latest generation of artists, with a common point of departure being the nexus of sound, image and social space.
Length: 18:22 Minutes
Production: Retina Fabrik
Spaciously presented across more than 2,000 square metres in Hamburger Bahnhof’s Rieckhallen, the group exhibition Magical Soup features key works complemented by loans representing the latest generation of artists, with a common point of departure being the nexus of sound, image and social space.
Length: 0:46 Minutes
Production: art/beats
Length: 6:24 Minutes
The artist Sandra Mujinga talks in a conversation with the curator Anna-Catharina Gebbers about aspects of her work “Disruptive Pattern” (2018). Her video installation without sound on three flatscreens, which features the dancer Amie Mbye, is on view in the exhibition “Magical Soup. Media Art from the Nationalgalerie Collection, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof and Loans“ (September 6, 2020 until Januar 3, 2021 at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart).
Sandra Mujinga (born 1989 in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a Norwegian artist and musician who lives and works in Berlin and Oslo. She studied at the Malmö Art Academy (Lund University) and at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Recent solo exhibitions include Midnight, Vleeshal, Middelburg (2020), SONW – Shadow of New Worlds, Bergen Kunsthall (2019); Seasonal Pulses, Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019); Hoarse Globules, UKS, Oslo (2018); and Calluses, Tranen, Copenhagen (2018).
Length: 5:10 Minutes
Michael Schmidt (1945–2014) occupies a unique position in contemporary German photography. Born in Berlin and with no formal training in photography, he discovered the medium as a form of artistic expression in the mid-1960s. The retrospective at the Hamburger Bahnhof portrays his life’s work chronologically for the first time and also represents the first exhibition of the photographer’s oeuvre in his hometown of Berlin in 25 years.
Length: 0:54 minutes
Production: Retina Fabrik
A painting by Katharina Grosse can appear anywhere. Her large-scale works are multi-dimensional pictorial worlds in which splendid color sweeps across walls, ceilings, objects, and even entire buildings and landscapes. For the exhibition It Wasn’t Us the artist has transformed the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart as well as the outdoor space behind the building, into an expansive painting which radically destabilises the existing order of the museum architecture.
Produktion: artbeats
Länge: 4:31 Minuten
In “Bergama Stereo”, an architectural installation with sound, the Istanbul-based artist and musician Cevdet Erek references the form, the historically attributed function and the ongoing reception of the Pergamonaltar, now located in Berlin, and creates a new interpretation of the famous Hellenistic edifice.
Length: 5:26 Minuten
Production: ants and butterflies
Camera: Frank Paul
Cutting: Ralf Schuster
Grip: Günther Fekl
From 5 September 2019 to 26 January 2020, Kulturforum will present the group exhibition Micro Era. Media Art from China. Invited by the Nationalgalerie, the two artists Cao Fei (*1978) and Lu Yang (*1984) asked the artists Fang Di (*1987) and Zhang Peili (*1957) for a dialogue. The artists selected the works together with the Chinese and German curators Anna-Catharina Gebbers (Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegen-wart – Berlin), Victor Wang (freelance curator, Shanghai/London) and Yang Beichen (freelance curator and film reseacher, Beijing). The exhibition will be accompanied by Pi Li (M +, Hong Kong) as curatorial advisor.
In September 2019 the curatorial team of the exhibition "Micro Era. Media Art from China" Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Victor Wang and Yang Beichen, the exhibited artists Cao Fei, Fang Di, Lu Yang and Zhang Peili, met to talk about the exhibition, its dramaturgy and the works.
Length: 1:48 h
In September 2019 the curatorial team of the exhibition "Micro Era. Media Art from China" Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Victor Wang and Yang Beichen, the exhibited artists Cao Fei, Fang Di, Lu Yang and Zhang Peili, met to talk about the exhibition, its dramaturgy and the works.
Länge: 1:38 h
Exhibition: Andreas Mühe: Mischpoche from 26.04.2019 to 11.08.2019
Length: 2:32 minutes
Production: Freunde der Nationalgalerie
More videos can be found on the YouTube-Playlist of the Freunde der Nationalgalerie.
The Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart will present an extensive exhibition of works by the American painter Jack Whitten (1939–2018), the first solo show by the artist in a European institution.
Length: 0:27 minutes
Production: artbeats
Collaborative and trans-disciplinary artist Antje Majewski (born 1968 in Marl, Germany) has opened an ongoing dialogue with colleagues and invited them to contribute works exploring the reciprocal relationships between human and beyond-human beings in a poetic way.
Length: 0:44 Minuten
Production: retina fabrik
The exhibition PAINTER. MENTOR. MAGICIAN. is the first to spotlight the enormous influence of the former Brücke artist and expressionist Otto Mueller (1874–1930).
Length: 0:32 minutes
Production: Freunde der Nationalgalerie
In The Demon’s Brain, a multichannel video installation created expressly for the exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Agnieszka Polska grapples with the ethical question of how individuals can assume social responsibility amid the overwhelming demands of the present moment.
Length: 2:09 minutes
Production: bboxx Filme
Film for the exhibition „Hello World. Revising a Collection” from April 28th to August 26th 2018
Length: 3:49 minutes
Credits: Joseph Beuys, Hanson Duane, Hannah Höch, Joseph Kosuth, Bruce Nauman © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Barnett Newman © Barnett Newman Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
Robert Indiana © Morgan Art Foundation/ARS New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
From February 10 to September 18, 2016, Nationalgalerie will present a solo show by Berlin based artist Julian Rosefeldt (b. 1965) at Hamburger Bahnhof. Rosefeldt is renowned not only for his photography but also for his elaborately staged films.
The exhibition was made possible by the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie. We would like to thank Tretford Teppich for their generous support.
Manifesto is a joint production of the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Sydney's Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hannover's Sprengel Museum and Ruhrtriennale. The project was also created in collaboration with Bayerischer Rundfunk and with the generous support of Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Burger Collection, Hong Kong. As part of this collaboration, Manifesto was purchased for the museum by Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie.
Length: 2:43 Minutes
Produktion: bboxxFilme © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart will be showing Anne Imhof's work Angst II from September 14–25.
The exhibition is made possible by the Freunde der Nationalgalerie and supported by BMW. The opera at the basis of the exhibition was coproduced by Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Kunsthalle Basel in collaboration with La Biennale de Montréal.
Length: 9:21 Minutes
Film: Nathan Corbin
Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski
Two By Two marks the first joint exhibition of New York-based artists Mary Heilmann (b. 1940, San Francisco) and David Reed (b. 1946, San Diego). The show has been conceived specially for Hamburger Bahnhof and presents forty paintings and installative works created since the 1970s.
Length: 2:52 minutes
Production: bboxxFILME
The second edition of the Festival of Future Nows is taking place during Berlin Art Week 2017 at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.
Length: 1:26 minutes
Film for the exhibition "Adrian Piper. The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3".
Length: 3:36 minutes
Our film series "Behind the Scenes" introduces the work of some of the staff in different areas and museums of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Episode 1: Conservator Carolin Bohlmann from the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Length: 3:24 minutes
Interview: Constantin Lieb
Camera: Felix von Boehm
Production: bboxxfilme
GLOBAL MUSEUM: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 30 September - 1 October 2019 Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Length: 58:56 minutes
Every first Thursday of the month, from 4 to 8 pm, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart offers free entry. The central focus of VOLKSWAGEN ART4ALL will be to explore topics relating to the museum’s current exhibitions and collections. An interdisciplinary programme comprising lectures, artists’ talks, performances and multi-lingual tours aims to make art more accessible to wider audiences.
Length: 1:35 minutes
The conference "The Idea of the Global Museum" is part of a project, which explores the Nationalgalerie Collection with respect to its international and transregional entanglements.
Lenght: 22:52 minutes
The video documentation of the further lectures of the conference is available at YouTube: Playlist "The Idea of the Global Museum".