Exhibition programme 2023/24

Alice Rekab: Mehrfamilienhaus
Ricochet #14 
February 16–May 14, 2023

The Museum VILLA STUCK is presenting Alice Rekab’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. Rekab explores cultural and personal narratives—stories that are told about us and by us. The artist’s Irish/Sierra Leonean identity serves as a starting point to reflect on realities of life, experiences of growing up, and family histories. What shape does our belonging take? The joys and traumas of our existence are viewed through the prisms of body, family, and nation state.

The exhibition in the Ricochet series shows preexisting and new work. The latter were created during Rekab’s 2021 AIR-M Residency at the Villa Waldberta and the 2022 Kunstverein München Peripheral Alliances Residency. Exploring mimetic, dilettante, and regional methods of cultural production, Rekab develops a hybridized visual language. Their transdisciplinary work spans collage, film, installation, sculpture, and text.

A cooperation with the AIR-M Villa Waldberta Residency of the City of Munich and the Peripheral Alliances Residency of Kunstverein München

Kindly supported by Culture Ireland. 

Curated by Dr. Sabine Schmid. 

Marinella Senatore: We Rise by Lifting Others
May 4–September 10, 2023

Marinella Senatore is a central figure in contemporary Italian art. Her projects create sites where people can develop something together and let their creativity unfold. Following the tradition of the Greek agora, the Roman forum, and the local main square, the artist provides conditions for initiating and supporting encounters. Her art creates a public sphere.

The Museum VILLA STUCK and the Generali Foundation Collection at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg are organizing the artist’s largest exhibition to date as a project in two chapters, which is to be presented concurrently in Munich and Salzburg. The two presentations are complementary and provide a survey of Senatore’s wide-ranging artistic practice, examining issues ranging from the tension between the individual and the collective, desires and belonging, and sociopolitical exclusion to alternative forms of organization and the transformative potential of art.

“The School of Narrative Dance” project, begun in 2012, will be continued in Munich and culminate on July 23 in a street parade stretching from Museum VILLA STUCK to Odeonsplatz. Central axes of the city, previously used by the Nazis for their propaganda marches, will be deliberately occupied.

A cooperation with Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Generali Foundation.

Curated by Dr. Helena Pereña (Munich) and Dr. Jürgen Tabor (Salzburg).

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Hypnogirl 23
May 16–June 4, 2023

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Magdeleine G. caused a huge sensation in Munich with the spectacular dances she performed under hypnosis. The experimental artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster approaches these unusual performances as a holographic illusion in the historic spaces of the Museum VILLA STUCK. With this “apparition” a significant moment in the history of dance will be illuminated and can be experienced again—with a spotlight on contemporary perspectives, especially on the subjects of reality and fiction, body and technology. The contemporary interpretation takes its inspiration from images of and reports on the performances in 1904 at Münchener Schauspielhaus, today’s Münchner Kammerspiele, as well as photographs from the Bibliothèque de Genève.

Produced by MUNICH DANCE HISTORIES in cooperation with Museum VILLA STUCK and DANCE—International Festival of Contemporary Dance Munich and as part of the pilot project Lebendiges Archiv of the Cultural Department of the City of Munich.

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the NEUSTART KULTUR program, tanz:digital program of the German Dance Association.

Project dramaturgy/concept: Thomas Betz, Barbara Galli-Jescheck, Brygida Ochaim with Margot Th. Brandlhuber

Heidrun Sandbichler: Nachtgesang
June 28–October 1, 2023

During her career, Heidrun Sandbichler has created a focused body of work that, poetically and movingly, evokes individual pain and society’s collective wounds. Though politically engaged, her art is invariably muted. Suggesting rather than shouting, it stems from an aesthetic attitude that transcends blanket statements.

Sources and references to history spring from some of Sandbichler’s works, creating radical links that transport the past into a contemporary context. Her exploration of the ”Gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art) in the form of Franz von Stuck’s artist’s residence inspired her to create a new piece modeled on Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1665) with its description of volcanic flows in the Earth’s interior. A true-to-scale network of lakes and streams filled with liquid ink is positioned in the space as a counterpart to the celestial ceiling of Stuck’s music salon. And when bronze molehills adorn Franz von Stuck’s harmoniously designed classical artist’s garden, we can assume the existence of underground passages that identify the Villa Stuck as a Kafkaesque “burrow.”

Curated by Dr. Helena Pereña

Franz Kafka: 1924
October 25, 2023–February 11, 2024

To mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Franz Kafka, the Museum VILLA STUCK pays tribute to the writer’s enduring topicality with a large-scale exhibition featuring works by twentieth- and twenty-first century artists that explicitly or implicitly reference Kafka. Characters from Franz Kafka’s stories and novels introduce the various themes: the officer from “In the Penal Colony,” Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis, and, of course, Josef K. from The Trial.

Facsimiles of Kafka’s own drawings and fragments from his writings accompany visitors throughout the exhibition. The international and diverse group of artists featured serves to reflect the extraordinary impact of the German-speaking author’s oeuvre. Thematically and spatially, the presentation is conceived in such a way that the works complement one another other. New perspectives keep opening up, and they turn the tour into a Kafkaesque experience. Going beyond the educated middle-class perception of Kafka, the exhibition is aimed at a broad audience. Comics provide an easily accessible introduction to the subject and show different aspects of the individual protagonists of Kafka’s writings. Sebastian Jung uses drawings specially conceived for each section to build a bridge between comics and Kafka’s reception in contemporary art. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Ida Applebroog, Louise Bourgeois, Valie Export, Rodney Graham, Konrad Klapheck, Maria Lassnig, Paula Rego, Anri Sala, Chiharu Shiota, and others.

Curated by Dr. Helena Pereña