2016 exhibition preview

Julian Rosefeldt. Manifesto 
February 10–July 10, 2016

Julian Rosefeldt (b. 1965) has risen to international prominence above all with his elaborately staged film installations. Manifesto unites 13 films, running in parallel, in one installation. For each film, Rosefeldt has collaged historical original texts from a wealth of manifestos by artists, architects, choreographers and film makers—including Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Reiner, Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt and Jim Jarmusch. These texts have been abridged and combined to create 13 poetic monologues, which are delivered and embodied by the actress Cate Blanchett in various roles. Through costumes, masks and locations, and above all through her multi-faceted performances, Blanchett transforms herself into figures as diverse as a primary-school teacher, a puppeteer, a broker, a funeral speaker and a homeless person. In the role of these protagonists, Blanchett conveys the topicality of the texts.

The exhibition is made possible by the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie.

Carl Andre: Sculpture As Place, 1958–2010
May 5–September 18, 2016

Encompassing more than 300 works, Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010 is the largest solo show to date of this major US artist. Carl Andre’s oeuvre is presented in works from over five decades: Approximately 50 sculptures, over 200 poems, a group of rarely exhibited assemblages known as Dada Forgeries and a selection of photographs and ephemera allow audiences to trace the historical and aesthetic shifts and evolutions in his artistic production.

From the mid-1960s onwards, Andre pioneered a fundamentally different concept of sculpture. For the artist, sculpture becomes place and thereby redefines the role of the public and its experience of the artwork. On view are a unique selection of Andre’s signature floor sculptures made of building and industrial materials, which the artist arranges into grid structures and linear trajectories. Likewise, the poems Andre composed from the 1950s onwards can be understood as a conceptual extension of his sculptures. This body of work forms another focal point of the exhibition.

Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958–2010 is organized by Dia Art Foundation in partnership with the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The international tour of the exhibition is made possible by lead support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional tour support is provided by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte; The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston; the National Endowment for the Arts; and Sotheby’s.

Gülsün Karamustafa. Chronographia
June 10–October 23, 2016

Gülsün Karamustafa (b. 1946) is regarded as one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century in Turkey, where her work has exerted a profound influence on younger generations of artists from the 1990s until today. Internationally, her artworks have already appeared in numerous exhibitions. Chronographia at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin is the first comprehensive solo show of Karamustafa’s oeuvre presented in a museum context outside Turkey.

Karamustafa’s artistic production extends from the 1970s to the present day and encompasses a variety of media, including painting, installation, performance art and video. Migration, politically-induced nomadism, popular culture, feminism and gender are central themes of her work, which also takes a critical look at the Western view of the countries of the Middle East. The exhibition facilitates a dialogue between these themes and thereby highlights the connections that have arisen between them across time, as well as pointing to their relevance to current discourses.

Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Das Kapital
July 2–November 6, 2016

The exhibition revolves around Das Kapital Raum 1970–1977 (The Capital Room 1970–1977) by Joseph Beuys, a whole-room installation which the artist first created in 1980 for the Venice Biennale. This monumental composition is one of the largest environments in Beuys’s oeuvre and sums up his artistic work of the 1970s.

During those years a new definition of the term “capital” took shape in Beuys’ mind, one going far beyond the bounds of economics. His statement that “Art=Capital” describes the creative process of artistic praxis as an expanded way of thinking. In Beuys’ view, art becomes the true capital of humankind only in this expanded sense. He understood the resulting, necessary reform of all social relationships as “social sculpture.” The exhibition is devoted to this positive, creative concept of capital and to the work on shaping the future that Beuys accomplished publicly in an unmatched experiment. The same re-evaluation of the concepts of art, capital and money is shown in corresponding works by various artists as well as in artefacts and documents from different epochs.