2013 – 2018
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle
For nearly two decades, every year three or four exhibitions focusing on contemporary and modern art have been shown in the clearly structured exhibition space on Unter den Linden. Part of Deutsche Bank’s Art, Culture & Sports, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle offers a forum for young talent on the International are scene and presents up-and-coming positions in the art world to audiences, often for the first time.
The KunstHalle sees itself as a place for discoveries—as an institution that is as alive and in motion as the capital. The three to four high-profile exhibitions each year focus on new artistic landscapes and the phenomena of a globalized society. The Deutsche Bank Collection will be newly experienced in the KunstHalle—in exhibitions designed by artists and international guest curators. A highlight of the program will be the presentation of the “Artist of the Year" of Deutsche Bank, who will be honored with a large solo exhibition. At the same time, the KunstHalle offers a forum for young talents from the international art scene in Berlin, which will be presented here for the first time to a wide audience.
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October 20, 2017 – March 25, 2018
Fahrelnissa Zeid
Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901–1991) was a pioneering artist best known for her large-scale colorful canvases—some over five meters wide—which reveal her unique vision and distinctive abstract style. This major exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, and sculptures spanning over 40 years, from expressionist works executed in Istanbul in the early 1940s, to immersive abstract canvases exhibited in London, Paris, and New York in the 1950s and 1960s, finishing with her return to portraiture later in life. Celebrating her extraordinary career, the exhibition presents Zeid as an important figure in the international story of abstract art. Fahrelnissa Zeid is part of a collaboration between the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and Tate Modern, which will present artists from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East for the first time in Berlin.
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July 7 – October 3, 2017
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist
In his native Brazil, Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994), along with the architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, is revered as a pioneer of Modernism. His garden designs for the capital Brasília and, above all, his works in Rio de Janeiro have had a lasting impact on the face of these cities. Burle Marx’s revolutionary landscape architecture, which is oriented to abstract painting, has an international reputation even today. Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist, which had its premiere at The Jewish Museum, New York, in 2016, illustrates the full range of his artistic production and erases boundaries between the different media and disciplines. Burle Marx was not only a landscape architect, but also a sculptor, set designer, designer, and environmental activist. In the show, his art enters into dialog with works by international contemporary artists, including Juan Araujo, Paloma Bosquê, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Veronika Kellndorfer, Luisa Lambri, Arto Lindsay, Nick Mauss, and Beatriz Milhazes.
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March 24 – June 18, 2017
Kemang Wa Lehulere: Bird Song – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2017
The starting point for Bird Song is the artist Gladys Mgudlandlu (1917–1979). The South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere documents his research on the long-forgotten South African painter with texts and videos. He combines Mgudlandlu’s watercolors and drawings with blackboard and ink drawings as a kind of artistic dialog between present and past. Also on view are two new installations, a wall carving and a video work. Their visual language is touching yet also of universal quality. Wa Lehulere begins his artistic quest with a journey into South Africa’s past characterized by the trauma of apartheid and continues it with universal themes such as suppression and ideological conditioning.
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November 18, 2016 – March 5, 2017
Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All
Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) played a central role in the development of modern Indian art. The self-taught artist painted things that no one before him had shown: the everyday life of the Indian middle-class. He was also internationally recognized as an important protagonist of twentieth-century painting. He began working artistically in the 1960s and soon belonged to the Baroda School, an art movement that introduced new forms of narrative and figuration into modern Indian art.
After experimenting with Pop Art early on, Khakhar moved on to develop his own idiosyncratic style of painting that combined seeming opposites such as high and mass culture, everyday life and historical painting. With great courage, he dealt with complex and provocative issues, class differences, desire and homosexuality, and his personal battle with cancer.
You Can’t Please All is part of the cooperation between Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and Tate Modern, in which artists from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are presented in Berlin for the first time.
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July 21 – October 30, 2016
COMMON AFFAIRS: Revisiting the VIEWS Award – Contemporary Art from Poland
COMMON AFFAIRS is a project of the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, the Polish Institute Berlin, and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. All of the participating artists were nominated for or won the VIEWS Award. The exhibition touches on the history and impact of the prize initiated by Deutsche Bank and Zachęta, which today is the most important award for contemporary Polish art. Against this backdrop, the participating artists explore the freedoms and discourse public and private sponsorship permits. Additionally, the different artistic positions in the show comment on developments since the political upheaval in Poland in 1989 and the country’s changing role in the European Community. On view, among others, are works by Paweł Althamer, Azorro Tymek Borowski, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Rafał Jakubowicz, Agnieszka Polska & Witek Orski, Janek Simon, Konrad Smoleński, Monika Sosnowska, and Iza Tarasewicz.
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April 29 – July 3, 2016
Basim Magdy: The Stars Were Aligned for a Century of New Beginnings – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2016
While Basim Magdy, who was born in 1977 in Assiut, Egypt, invites visitors to take a journey into the future, he is primarily concerned with the present. In the show at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, his films, slide projections, photographs, works on paper, and installations from 2006 to 2016 combine into a stream of images that reflects the fluid boundaries between reality and virtuality.
The title of the exhibition, The Stars Were Aligned for a Century of New Beginnings, initially sounds optimistic. However, Basim Magdy plays ironically and humorously with the constantly changing cycle of hopes, utopias, and defeats.
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November 25, 2015 – April 10, 2016
Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible
Organized by the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the exhibition focuses on Jackson Pollock’s Mural. This epochal masterpiece was restored and cleaned in 2012 at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles. Commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim in 1943 for her New York townhouse, Mural paved the way for Abstract Expressionism with its new and daring sense of scale. At the same time, it anticipated Pollock’s “poured” abstractions, which the artist would begin four years later. Mural is the largest painting Pollock ever made. It has had a major impact on American art up to the present today. In addition to works by Jackson Pollock, the KunstHalle is showing works by Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, László Moholy-Nagy, and David Smith, among others.
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September 16 – November 8, 2015
Xenopolis – STADT/BILD (Image of a City)
The autumn of 2015 marks the second collaborative project between Berlin’s leading art institutions—Berlinische Galerie, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and Nationalgalerie—which will present a four thematically related exhibitions. Titled STADT/BILD (Image of a City), the project approaches the notion of “The City” from various perspectives. Questions are raised about the concept of “home” and its changing meaning in the digital age, and structures and processes of individual urban institutions are examined. The exhibition Xenopolis at the KunstHalle will focus on the city as a living organism that does not belong to anyone in particular. The city is understood as a free zone, an urban fabric defined by outsiders moving in. Working under the hypothesis that there is no such thing as one coherent city, but many cities, the curator Simon Njami explores this phenomenon in the exhibition.
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July 10 – August 30, 2015
Photo-Poetics: An Anthology
Photo-Poetics: An Anthology presents photographs, videos, and slide installations by ten international artists drawn from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as well as from private lenders. The group exhibition documents recent developments in contemporary photography with selected works by Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag, and Sara VanDerBeek. In a time defined by rapid digital transformation, the artists in this show investigate the traditions and magic of photography as they attempt to rematerialize the photograph through meticulous printing, using analog film material and other disappearing photo technologies. While invested in exploring the processes and techniques of photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of “photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object.
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June 12 – 28, 2015
Checkpoint California: 20 Years Villa Aurora in Los Angeles
No region embodies the American dream as much as California, the Golden State on the Pacific Ocean and home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Malibu and Disneyland, palm trees, sea, and eternal blue skies. In the 1940s, the exile residence of Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger was a meeting point for exiled artists. Since 1995, Villa Aurora has housed artists on fellowships working in the visual arts, composition, performance, film, and literature. With Checkpoint California the Villa Aurora is celebrating its 20th anniversary as an artists’ residence. Former fellows have put together a comprehensive program consisting of film, music, readings, and talks. The exhibition at the KunstHalle presents selected works by Nairy Baghramian, Rosa Barba, Peggy Buth, Sabine Hornig, Christian Jankowski, Michael Just, Philipp Lachenmann, Albrecht Schäfer, and Thomas Struth.
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March 26 – May 25, 2015
Koki Tanaka: A Vulnerable Narrator – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2015
The exhibition A Vulnerable Narrator provides a comprehensive overview of the work of Koki Tanaka, who references the history of „art activism“" and views his work as a gentle but lasting approach to this movement. Video installations, large-scale photographs, and drawings related to his projects and ideas, as well as documents from nearly a decade of his work will be on display. The show documents the journey from Tanaka’s early experiments with mass-produced products and materials to his later collaborative actions and performances. Born in 1975 in Tochigi, Japan, the artist often refers in his actions to the social situation in his home country. But he always responds to the place where the action takes place as well. Invariably, the tasks also have a general meaning: Tanaka examines how we behave in a state of emergency, what we do when technical and social systems fail and we have to solve problems together with others.
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Dezember 5, 2014 – March 8, 2015
“… Höhere Wesen befehlen.” Works on paper from the Frieder Burda Collection
The Deutsche Bank KunstHalle is showing a selection of works on paper from the Frieder Burda Collection that have been rarely shown so far. The exhibition focuses on drawings, watercolors, and goauches from 1955 to 2009 by Georg Baselitz, Willem de Kooning, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer, Neo Rauch, and Gerhard Richter. Over a period of decades, Frieder Burda has passionately built one of the most important private collections in Europe, extending from Abstract Expressionism to current international positions. With this selection of works on paper, the KunstHalle continues a series that is devoted to drawing—a long-neglected medium that today characterizes contemporary artistic discourse more than any other from different perspectives.
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September 20 – November 16, 2014
Meschac Gaba: Museum of Contemporary African Art
Meschac Gaba, an artist born in Benin, will transform the KunstHalle into the Museum of Contemporary African Art. At the same time, the exhibition will kick off a collaboration between the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and the Tate Modern, which will feature three exhibitions of international art in Berlin. Gaba began working on his Museum of Contemporary African Art in 1996/1997 while a student at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. At that time, he realized that such institutions did not exist on his home continent and that contemporary African art was largely unknown in Europe. He subsequently began to create extraordinary situations and places of encounter with his installations, the meaning of which is gradually revealed in interaction with the visitors.
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July 17 – August 31, 2014
Otto Piene. More Sky
With around 60 artworks, the exhibition Otto Piene. More Sky at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle is dedicated to the broad spectrum of the artist’s early work. The show revolves around the main works of the ZERO years, which are presented here not as the endpoint of Piene’s creative oeuvre, but as the starting point for a development in art that had far-reaching consequences. Early light prints and graphic works, evocative smoke and fire paintings, and light sculptures, some of which are part of the Deutsche Bank Collection, highlight the artist’s incorporation of the elements air, fire, and light. A light room that the artist has arranged in a new way emphasizes the magical, meditative aspect of these approaches. The exhibition is part of a comprehensive cooperation with the National Gallery. At the same time, a reenactment of the important slide work The Proliferation of the Sun is taking place in the Neue Nationalgalerie. A Sky Art event by Otto Piene in the outdoor area of Mies van der Rohe’s building kicks off the Berlin Art Summer on July 19
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March 21 – June 22, 2014
Victor Man: Zephir – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2014
The exhibition Zephir featuring Romanian painter Victor Man encompasses works from 2006 to the present day, including paintings never previously presented to the public as well as a stained-glass window created especially for this occsion. Born in Cluj, Romania in 1974, Man is equally inspired by the ancient and the modern. In his work, he concentrates on the development of an autonomous iconography in which frequent literary references intermingle with his own biography. Literature and the history of art, collective memory and personal experience are woven together by the artist into a non-linear story where distinctions between present and past, fiction, imagination, and reality are dispensed with.
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November 28, 2013 – March 2, 2014
The Circle Walked Casually
The exhibition The Circle Walked Casually curated by Victoria Noorthoorn presents a selection of works on paper from the Deutsche Bank Collection. Together with the Brazilian exhibition architect Daniela Thomas, she has developed an innovative form of presentation: a seemingly boundless open space in which the works appear to be suspended in air. At the center of the show are artworks from Classic Modernist as well as contemporary artists from across the globe. The exhibition not only shows a variety of masterpieces and rediscovered works in the Deutsche Bank Collection. It also fosters dialog between the works, particularly with regard to space and line, the two key features of drawing.
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September 18 – November 10, 2013
To Paint Is To Love Again – Painting Forever!
To Paint Is To Love Again re-contextualizes the largely unknown late work of the Berlin-based artist Jeanne Mammen (1890–1976). Shown together with the contemporary artists Antje Majewski, Katrin Plavčak, and Giovanna Sarti, affinities and surprising relationships emerge in spite of the obvious differences. The three artists deliberately entered into a dialog with Mammen’s work to produce new works for the exhibition, which are shown alongside selected existing paintings. To Paint Is To Love Again is part of the overview exhibition Painting Forever! In addition to the KunstHalle, Berlinische Galerie, KW Berlin, and the Neue Nationalgalerie are showing contemporary paintings in the context of the Berlin Art Week.
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August 27 – September 8, 2013
SÜDEN – Villa Romana: Art, Music & Performance
The exhibition SÜDEN (SOUTH) – Villa Romana: Art, Music & Performance presents an extensive program focusing on the four winners of the 2013 Villa Romana Prize, who spent ten months in Florence. Apart from Shannon Bool, whose work intensively explores clichés, norms, and ideals of female eroticism, a body sculpture, installations, videos and performances by Mariechen Danzs are on view. In addition, there are minimalist object installations by Heide Hinrichs, who uses them to investigate the significance of everyday found objects in the relationship between body and space, and Daniel Maier-Reimer’s condensed photographs—journeys that are each summed up in a single photograph.
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April 18 – August 4, 2013
Imran Qureshi – Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2013
Imran Qureshi, born 1972 in Pakistan, studied miniature painting in Lahore at the National College of Arts. Today he teaches this traditional discipline there today. Qureshi is considered to be one of the most important contemporary artists on the subcontinent, not least because he reclaims the regionally and historically rooted discipline and transports it to the present day. His work constitutes a unique synthesis of the genre’s motifs and techniques with current issues and the formal language of contemporary abstract painting. Qureshi incorporates personal observations on everyday life in Pakistan into his work, including observations of violence, which be found not only in his native country, but in many cultures and societies worldwide.