17.06.2010
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
The current design for the flags on the roof of the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin are by Christoph Niemann.
Niemann, born in 1970 in Waiblingen (South Germany), is an internationally prolific illustrator, designer and author, and divides his time between Berlin and New York. He has designed front pages for 'The New Yorker', 'Spiegel', 'Time', 'Newsweek' and the 'New York Times Magazine'. His works have featured in solo shows in galleries in New York, Paris and Ljubljana. His exhibition in the Transit Museum in Brooklyn will open in November. Among Niemann's latest publications are 'I LEGO New York' and the children's books 'Der kleine Drache' and 'Subway'.
His works often feature easily discernible pictograms, which are arresting for their inventiveness and fine sense of irony and can appear both simple and complex at once. For a cover of 'The New Yorker', for instance, Niemann transformed the elements of the American flag into ingredients for a barbecue. His blog, 'My Abstract City' is a regular feature on the New York Times' website, where he variously relates the history of the Berlin Wall by weaving paper strips together to form images, reconstructs famous New York sights using a minimal number of Lego blocks or illustrates his personal relationship with coffee by painting with the beverage on serviettes.
Niemann's icons play with the human mind's propensity to create narrative links and to read meaning into abstract signs. While the flag for the Hamburger Bahnhof, with its red circle on a white background, would otherwise be instantly recognizable as the Japanese flag, as it flutters over the museum roof with a basket attached beside it, it suddenly resembles a basketball.
Niemann has won many prizes awarded by major American design organisations and has received awards in Germany from the 'Lead Academy' 'Art Directors Club'.