Annual program 2016

In 2016, Haus der Kunst offers an expansive program of exhibitions ranging from focused monographic surveys to major thematic presentations. The hightlights of the year include Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965, a comprehensive exploration of the pivotal and defining moments of contemporary art history. Additionally, in cooperation with the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, we present A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou.
 

James Casebere
Fugitive
February 12–June 12, 2016
With nearly 50 works, the exhibition presents works drawn from all periods of James Casebere’s career. For the exhibition in the Haus der Kunst, the artist realizes four new site-specific monumental works. The photographic works of James Casebere explore architectural subjects such as domestic settings, flooded corridors of grand mansions, bare spaces of prison interiors, and ancient water tunnels. However, these images emerge from a singular approach of production: they are photographs of detailed, self-made architectural models in which completely imagined and fabricated scenes are subsequently transposed into a pictorial record. These images hover somewhere between the fugitive and the sublime, between the representational and the staged.

The exhibition is curated by Okwui Enwezor.
 

A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou
March 25–September 11, 2016
For the first time, the contemporary collection of the Centre Pompidou will be presented on a large-scale outside France. The presentation will cover works from the late 1980s up to now. The year 1989 marked a break with the past and the start of a new era. The fall of the Berlin Wall toppled divisions in the world of European art, while the events of Tiananmen Square focused attention on a new China. Today’s ongoing globalization allows for an unprecedented mobility. The static understanding of identity, once based on origin and nationality, has since given way to a more transnational and variable narrative. Space is defined above all, both socially and politically, by traumatic historical events, home country, exile, diaspora, and hybrid identities, such as Turkish-German or African-Brazilian. The presentation of the Centre Pompidou contemporary collections at Haus der Kunst focuses particularly on this altered geography, most notably in the former Eastern Europe, China, Lebanon, and various Middle Eastern countries, India, Africa, and Latin America.

The exhibition is organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Haus der Kunst in Munich, and is curated by Christine Macel and Julienne Lorz.

Capsule 05 / 06, May 13–September 18, 2016, have been given over to the Portuguese artist duo João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva and the British artist Sara MacKillop.

The exhibitions are curated by Anna Schneider and Julienne Lorz.
 

Michael Buthe
July 8–November 20, 2016
Taking his lead from German Informel and American Minimalist Art, Michael Buthe became captivated by non-European cultures, from North Africa to the Middle East. Through his intensive research, he countered the cool concept of Minimalism with pronounced sensuality. Like Joseph Beuys and the artists of Italian Arte Povera, he deliberately drew on the sensual fullness of everyday life and poor materials. The retrospective at the Haus der Kunst combines important, loosely chronological work groups. It includes early drawings of the 1960s and 1970s, large-format fabric images, paintings, sculptures, and assemblages, including the only two remaining of his major installations, which appeal to all the senses of the audience, making Buthe’s spatial thinking tangible.

The exhibition is presented in cooperation with Kunstmuseum Luzern, S.M.A.K., Gent, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Idea and concept: Heinz Stahlhut, Kunstmuseum Luzern. The presentation in Haus der Kunst is curated by Ulrich Wilmes.

Postwar—Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965
October 12, 2016–March 26, 2017
Postwar—Art Between the Pacific and Atlantic, 1945–1965 seeks to understand the complex legacies of artistic practice and art historical discourses that emerged globally in the aftermath of the Second World War’s devastation. Through the vital relationship between artworks and artists, produced and understood from the perspectives of international, regional, and local contexts, the exhibition traces artistic developments during the first 20 years after the war by following the sweeping lines of the two oceans across Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Africa, the Mediterranean, North America, and South America. Probing differing concepts of artistic modernity, such as abstraction, realism, figuration, and representation, the exhibition explores how receptions and formulations of modernism informed the manifestation of specific variants of modern art.

The exhibition explores relations of conflict, as in the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, as well as various liberation struggles, from Algeria to India to Nigeria, from anti-nuclear campaigns to civil rights. It also explores relations of connection, the transnationalism suggested by the “between” of the exhibition title, with people and ideas moving across national boundaries. “Postwar” describes a truly global condition: the increasingly interlocked and interdependent nature of the world itself as a single entity, as emphasized by new political and technological realities.

Postwar—Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 is curated by Okwui Enwezor, Ulrich Wilmes and Katy Siegel. The exhibition is generously supported by the Bundeskulturstiftung, the Goethe-Institut and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
October 28, 2016–February 12, 2017
The films and photographs of artist duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige examine the quality of these media to capture and chronicle time and transition. Politicized at an early age by the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), they question the role of the image in relation to memory and history, by exploring the parameters of image production and its narratives, especially under the condition of war. At the Haus der Kunst, conceptual photographic work series will be presented alongside installations and films, which have in part been developed specifically for this exhibition. Screenings and performances are a substantial part of the project.

The exhibition is curated by by Marta Gili, Hoor Al Qasimi, Miguel G. Cortés and Anna Schneider and organized in cooperation with Jeu de Paume, Paris, Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mareija—Sharjah, and the IVAM, Valencia.

Improvise NOW!
December 2016
Improvise NOW! seeks to explore the vital links between music and modern/contemporary art. The project delves into the way improvisation structured and influenced compositional and artistic strategies in the postwar period. Miles Davis reportedly said of improvisation, “Sometimes you run out of notes. The notes just disappear and you have to play a sound.” Taking the point where notes dissolve into pure sound, where expression and structure delimits abstraction, the goal of Improvise NOW! is to present these sounds. The exhibition will be accompanied by concerts.

The exhibition and program is curated by Markus Müller.
 

Further information on the ongoing series DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT, Archive Gallery and the Cooperation with Sammlung Goetz will follow soon.

Press contact:
Elena Heitsch, presse [​at​] hausderkunst.de