Max Beckmann, Lena Henke, Nancy Lupo, Heidi Bucher, Martin Kippenberger, Rachel Whiteread

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A crown can confer power or equally deceive. In Max Beckmann's King and Demagogue (König und Demagoge) (1946), it sits in the head of a bewildered ruler, while behind him the rabble-rouser seizes control. In contrast, on Nancy Lupo's Untitled (2023), a series of golden paper crowns winds spirally across the floor - a symbol of rule, consumption, and an endless loop of promises and decay.

Rachel Whiteread, too, addresses acts of disappearance. Her photographic series Demolished (1996) documents the demilition of a residential buildings in London - a ghostly testimony to urban transformation. Heidi Bucher's Repertory (1988) is another form of preservation. It is part of a series of latex casts for which the artist molded walls, windows, and floors, thus uncovering the layers of history.

Martin Kippenberger similarly repeatedly appropriated other spaces for his work. Hotels became temporary studios, places of transit where he left traces, including the drawing No problem - no problème (1986). Lena Henke transfers the question of appropriation to the city: in City Lights (Dead Horse Bay) (2016), a surreal model of Manhattan, she interrogates how power and control are exercised through the physical design of space.