The Assembled Human

With The Assembled Human (November 8, 2019–March 15, 2020) the Museum Folkwang focuses on the manifold entanglements between human being and machine: The exhibition presents art as a mirror of industrialisation, technologisation and digitisation. It provides a cultural-historical survey that encompasses key works of painting and graphic design, early experiments in photography, installations and films, along with recent works of Post-Internet Art. The Assembled Human transcends media and epochs to explore the major societal issues and upheavals of the last 150 years.

Among the exhibition’s key narrative threads are the links between war and technologisation, the optimisation of work in factories and later in the service society, and the increasing dissolution of the body in the digital world of the twenty-first century. Its major historical cornerstones include Germany’s industrialisation and the two world wars as well as the cybernetic turn of the 1950s with the advent of the age of information. Utopian hopes for the future, the fear of loss of control and the concern that the human being might be supplanted by the machines he has created are among the ambiguous conceptions of machines and technology presented in the show.

From Futurist painters such as Fortunato Depero and Giacomo Balla to masterworks of Cubism, Constructivism and New Objectivity by Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, El Lissitzky, Otto Dix and others, the show features several of the most important artistic stances of the early twentieth century. With exponents of post-war art, among them Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, Roy Lichtenstein and Konrad Klapheck, and feminist positions of the 1960s with works by Maria Lassnig, Helen Chadwick and Lynn Hershman Leeson, it spans the art history of the past century, up to works by Ed Atkins, Trevor Paglen and Avery Singer. In addition to painting, sculpture, graphic art and photography, the show also encompasses works of video and performance art.

A catalogue published by Kerber will be available.

Main sponsor: RWE
Funded by: Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, Brost Foundation, RAG Foundation, Kunststiftung NRW
Supported by: Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland, Sparkasse Essen

Featured artists:
Walter Heinz Allner, Bettina von Arnim, Gerd Arntz, Ed Atkins, Giacomo Balla, Joachim Bandau, Lenora de Barros, Willi Baumeister, Thomas Bayrle, Rudolf Belling, Ella Bergmann-Michel, Renato Bertelli, Alexandra Bircken, Umberto Boccioni, Wilhelm Braune, John Cage, Helen Chadwick, Computer Technique Group (CTG), Charles A. Csuri, Mariechen Danz, Fortunato Depero, Walter Dexel, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Charles & Ray Eames, Max Ernst, Alexandra Exter, Öyvind Fahlström, Harun Farocki, William Allan Fetter, Otto Fischer, Herbert W. Franke, Carl Grossberg, George Grosz, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Hammer, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eva Hesse, Heinrich Hoerle, Rebecca Horn, Vilmos Huszár, Boris Ignatowitsch, Fritz Kahn, Wassily Kandinsky, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Friedrich Kiesler, Konrad Klapheck, Jürgen Klauke, Heinrich Kley, Josh Kline, Iwan Kljun, Alexander Kluge, Kiki Kogelnik, Germaine Krull, Boris Kudojarow, Helmuth Kurth, Jürgen van Kranenbrock, Maria Lassnig, Fernand Léger, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Roy Lichtenstein, El Lissitzky, Hilary Lloyd, Goshka Macuga, René Magritte, Kasimir Malewitsch, Man Ray, Étienne-Jules Marey, Rémy Markowitsch, Caroline Mesquita, László Moholy-Nagy, Johannes Molzahn, Alexei Morgunow, Martin Munkácsi, Eadweard Muybridge, Otto Neurath, Katja Novitskova, ORLAN, Tony Oursler, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Eduardo Paolozzi, Georgi Petrusow, Antoine Pevsner, Walter Pichler, Jon Rafman, Robert Rauschenberg, Timm Rautert, Alexander Rodtschenko, Thomas Ruff, Walter Ruttmann, James Shaffer, Arkadi Schaichet, Xanti Schawinsky, Helmut Schenk, Oskar Schlemmer, Nicolas Schöffer, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Avery Singer, Stelarc, Friedemann von Stockhausen, Thayaht, Paul Thek, Jean Tinguely, Patrick Tresset, Anna Uddenberg, Erwin Wendt, Hugo von Werden, George Widener

Opening Hours
Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm, Thursday and Friday 10am–8pm
Closed on Mondays

Public program
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Press contact
Yvonne Daenekamp, T +49 201 8845 160 / yvonne.daenekamp [​at​] museum-folkwang.essen.de