Annual program 2018

In 2018 Haus der Kunst will present a broad exhibition program mirroring the complex contexts of contemporary art in the 21st century. Among the highlights of the coming year are four extensive monographic presentations devoted to Kiki Smith, Vivan Sundaram, Jörg Immendorff, and Joan Jonas, artists, who have pushed forward the boundaries of art by pioneering in new genres of art or showing no fear of taboos, by addressing topics with socio-cultural and political relevance.

The well-established formats like the annual art commission DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT, the capsule exhibitions and the archive gallery will also continue in 2018.

Kiki Smith: Procession
February 2, 2018–June 3, 2018

The American artist Kiki Smith (born 1954 in Nuremberg) is a pioneer of feminist art. For more than three decades she has created a multi-faceted work which deals with the political and social, philosophical and spiritual aspects of human nature. Her investigation of the body—without fear of taboos, or boundaries of shame—is a complex consideration of the human condition. Her work addresses topics such as aging, wounding and healing, wholeness and fragmentation, sexuality and gender, identity, and memory. In addition to sculpture, Smith works in a variety of other media, notably drawing, etching and lithography. A fascination with the drama of the body, particularly the female body, radical pictorial invention, and a bold use of material make Kiki Smith’s oeuvre unique, and one which has deeply influenced a generation of younger artists.

The exhibition presents an overview of Smith’s artistic development focusing on sculpture from the beginning of her career in the 1980s up to the present day.

Curated by Petra Giloy-Hirtz

Blind Faith: Between the Visceral and the Cognitive in Contemporary Art
March 2, 2018–August 19, 2018

At a time when society seems to have given up believing in facts, relying on a sense of “blind faith” instead, the body and mind binary has gained considerable importance in contemporary art. Engaging the visceral and the cognitive, the exhibition assembles around 25 international artists who deploy a variety of media in order to interrogate logics of truth, authenticity, opinion, and faith: Kader Attia, Olga Balema, Melanie Bonajo, Mariechen Danz, Cecile B. Evans, Andrea Éva Győri, Benedikt Hipp, Nicholas Hlobo, Marguerite Humeau, Hanne Lippard, Wangechi Mutu, Otobong Nkanga, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Jon Rafman, Mary Reid Kelley, Raphael Sbrzesny, Jeremy Shaw, Teresa Solar Abboud, Jol Thomson, David Zink Yi, a.o.

The exhibition will be combined with an extensive program of live events, performances and talks, and will be accompanied by a publication.

Curated by Julienne Lorz, Daniel Milnes, and Anna Schneider 

Vivan Sundaram: Disjunctures
June 29, 2018–October 7, 2018

Haus der Kunst honours Indian artist Vivan Sundaram (born 1943 in Shima, India) with the yet most comprehensive and wide-ranging survey of his multimedia practice in a European institution.

Sundaram started off as a painter. In the early 1990s, he adopted a spatially more expanded conception of art which coincided with his interest in exploring the materiality of a range of substances, whether artisanal or industrial. Moreover, the choice of materials usually resonates thematically in the different bodies of work that Sundaram has made over the last twenty years. Sundaram’s work comes freighted with a range of references—topical as well as art historical. History, memory, archive: the three keywords that he has designated as the overarching concerns of his practice are the signposts for the structure of the exhibition. Furthermore, desolation and destruction are recurring motives in Sundaram’s work, for as an artist he has never shied away from being a witness to his times.

Curated by Deepak Ananth

Jörg Immendorff
September 14, 2018–January 27, 2019

It was not until the end of the 1970s that Immendorff (1945–2007) decided to shift his threefold existence as a political activist, teacher and painter to the side of art.

The year 1976 was pivotal in some respects; Immendorff participated in the Venice Biennale with a flyer campaign that attacked the “deprivation of personal liberty” in the GDR and called for international artistic cooperation as a vehicle to overcome it. In 1978 he began working on his Café Deutschland series, inspired by Renato Guttuso’s Café Greco, which Immendorff had seen in an exhibition in Cologne. With his work on the series, Immendorff’s painting became more expressive through his bold use of color and gesture, thereby also freeing him of ideologically imbued emblematics. The process of change introduced here, with its formal and substantive opening-up, developed into the artist’s last work phase, a visual-linguistic “clearing” in the sense of a new pictorial energy and lightness, which Immendorff once described as a “liberation blow.”

The retrospective will include approximately 100 works. It does not follow a strict chronology; instead it will present the key elements in the development of Immendorff’s oeuvre in chapters.

Curated by Ulrich Wilmes

Joan Jonas
November 9, 2018–March 3, 2019

One of the most influential artists working today, Joan Jonas (born 1936 in New York) emerged in the late 1960s as a pioneer of video and performance art. Her experimental installations adopt an inventive and interdisciplinary approach, including elements such as projections, videos, drawings, soundscapes, objects, props and masks. With narration oftentimes at the core of her works, Jonas’s influences and inspirations stem predominantly from literature, Noh Theatre, as well as rituals that the artist has witnessed during her extensive travels over the years.

Joan Jonas has exhibited and performed her work extensively at an international level, including six participations in the documenta in Kassel and the representation of the United Statess at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).

The exhibition at Haus der Kunst will include seminal installations from the 1970s, as well as recent works from the last 15 years. Live performances, an extensive film program, and a catalogue containing several interviews with the artist will accompany the show.

Curated by Julienne Lorz, Curator, Haus der Kunst, Munich and Andrea Lissoni, Senior Curator, International Art (Film) Tate Modern. The exhibition is organized by Haus der Kunst and Tate Modern, London.