Fall program 2017

DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST. Sarah Sze
September 15, 2017-August 12, 2018

For the fifth edition of DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST American artist Sarah Sze (*1969) has created Centrifuge, a new site-specific installation that radically transforms visitors’ perception and experience of the museum’s Middle Hall. Centrifuge commences from a fixed point and dynamically morphs outwards into the surrounding space; shifting in scale and density as its various components unravel. The series of trajectories unfolded by the scattering concentrations of material and projections across the space create an intimate yet immersive environment informed by a changing sense of gravity, scale and time.

Awarded annually by Haus der Kunst, the commission DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT addresses a generation of artists who have developed a clear and challenging line of artistic inquiry based on the conviction that art and artists play a central role in global debates.

Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Damian Lentini

Again and Again. Sammlung Goetz in Haus der Kunst
September 15, 2017-April 8, 2018

Again and Again looks at how technical strategies of repetition such as loops, multi-channel installation, split-screen, multiple perspectives, and experiments with seriality were posited as formal and spatial means to expand the narrative toolkit of digital video throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The exhibition takes this as its starting point to examine artistic meditations on the cleaved or reproduced self. The videos and photographs on display manifest how artists engaged with a renewed interest in selfhood at the turn of the 21st century in relation to broader discourses on identity politics, gender studies, mass media, scientific progress, and the history of their chosen medium, the moving image.

With works by Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney, Candice Breitz, Brice Dellsperger, Tracey Emin, Mathilde ter Heijne, Mark Leckey, Kristin Lucas, Bjørn Melhus, Cindy Sherman and Ryan Trecartin.

Curated by Daniel Milnes

Capsule 07 / Oscar Murillo. Going Forth: The Institute of Reconciliation
Capsule 08 / Polina Kanis. The Procedure
September 15, 2017-March 18, 2018

With two individual installations by Colombian artist Oscar Murillo (*1986) and Russian artist Polina Kanis (*1985) Haus der Kunst continues its successful series of Capsule exhibitions for the fourth time. With this series, Haus der Kunst presents insights into current artistic productions and methods. It provides young, international artists with a distinct conceptional vision the opportunity to develop and exhibit a new work.

Expansive and extremely dense, Oscar Murillo’s installations consist of heavy, partially torn and re-sewn linen, painted on both sides with black oil chalk and oil paint. These elements are draped on steel constructions, which are reminiscent of autopsy tables or the frames of bunk beds, or are hung up on clotheslines that reconfigure the surrounding space. Historical, economic, social and philosophical fields of association are present: scales mounted on industrially manufactured hooks represent a system of measuring; a mixture of clay and corn set sculptural accents, like life signs. The floor, walls and visual axes unite to create a vibrating spatial constellation.

For her exhibition in Haus der Kunst, Polina Kanis has created her first three-channel video installation. The protagonists of Kanis’s films inhabit closed spatial systems and perform automated and ritualized actions that seem to be directed by an invisible entity. These microcosmic settings show how architectural conditions favor power structures and can influence and even pervert their inhabitants. In her new installation The Procedure, created especially for Haus der Kunst, Kanis takes a fictional museum building, which lies in ruins after an unknown catastrophe. Though measures are taken to find out what has happened, the causes remain undisclosed. All who are questioned respond with the same sentence: “I saw nothing.”

Capsule 07 curated by Anna Schneider
Capsule 08 curated by Daniel Milnes

With thanks to Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Venice, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, for their support of the project DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT.

Special thanks to David Zwirner, New York/London and Artwin Gallery, Moscow for the generous support of Capsule 07 / Oscar Murillo and Capsule 08 / Polina Kanis.

Capsule 08 / Polina Kanis is produced in partnership with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow.