On Friday, April 12, 2024, the Hamburger Bahnhof will open a collection presentation of Joseph Beuys for the first time in the Kleihueshalle, which will be shown with changing contemporary solo exhibitions: After a lengthy refurbishment and the conversion of the collection exhibitions, major works by Beuys will be on display there, including the spatial installation “Das Kapital Raum, 1970-1977”. The New York-based artist Naama Tsabar will kick off the parallel, changing contemporary presentation.
image above: Joseph Beuys, DAS ENDE DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS (1. Fassung), 1982–1983, 21 Basaltstelen auf Kanthölzern, Filz, Tonerde, Brechstange, Hubwagen, 23-teilig, Maße variabel, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Sammlung Marx (Eigentum des Landes Berlin), Installationsansicht: Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Westflügel, 2008, Foto: Thomas BrunsVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Joseph Beuys – Collection presentation
The Hamburger Bahnhof is set to present its extensive holdings of works by artist Joseph Beuys (1921–86) in the Kleihueshalle. The exhibition will include major pieces from the Nationalgalerie’s collection, such as THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY (1982), alongside Tram Stop. A monument to the future (1976) and DAS KAPITAL RAUM, 1970–1977 (1980), which both recently entered the collection thanks to the generous donation of the family of collector Erich Marx, who died in 2020. This fresh exploration relocates Beuys to the newly renovated Kleihueshalle.
Comprising a multimedia study room and some 20 key works, among them sculptures, environments, multiples and groundbreaking actions such as how to explain pictures to a dead hare (1964), Transsiberian Rail (1970) and I like America and America likes Me, this new constellation looks closely at the complex oeuvre and ambivalent reception of the artist. The presentation probes the ways in which Beuys’s work questioned the nature, materiality, language and perception of the boundaries and tasks of art. At the same time, it contextualises and compares Beuys’ vision of a slow social transformation with historic and contemporary countermodels by Grace Lee Boggs, Angela Davis, Agnes Denes, Donna Haraway among others. From now on, the permanent exhibition will be presented in dialogue with a series of temporary solo exhibition by contemporary artists.
The exhibition is curated by Catherine Nichols, curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Naama Tsabar
Naama Tsabar’s art overcomes the boundaries of sculpture, music, performance and architecture: Hamburger Bahnhof presents the installation and performance artist with her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The exhibition focuses on three bodies of work with wall and floor works that also function as musical instruments and can be activated by the audience. The performance, created especially in the exhibition, is developed in close collaboration with a group of female identifying or gender non-conforming musicians and performers from Berlin and New York. With the use of felt in connection with sound, Naama Tsabar corresponds with works by Joseph Beuys, which are also shown in parallel in the Kleihueshalle. The exhibition is the first in a series of contemporary presentations in dialogue with the presentation of Beuys’ works in the collection.
Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel, lives and works in New York) reveals hidden spaces and systems in her interactive works, re-defining gendered narratives and shifting the viewing experience to a moment of active participation. Her sculptures and installations can be played upon by the audience or in collaborative performances. In the transformational process between sculpture and instrument, between form and sound, the intimate, sensual, corporeal potential of her works becomes tangible. By collaborating with local groups of performers defined as female or non-binary, Tsabar is writing a new feminist and queer history of fluency.
Accompanying the exhibition is the fourth edition of the Hamburger Bahnhof catalog series, published by Silvana Editoriale Milano.
The exhibition is curated by Ingrid Buschmann, curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.
WHEN?
Joseph Beuys: from Friday, 12. April 2024
Naama Tsabar: Friday, 12. April until Sunday 22. September 2024
Opening: Thursday, 11. April 2024, 7 pm
Opening hours:
Tue, Wed, Fri 10 am – 6 pm
Thu 10 am – 8 pm
Sat – Sun 11 am – 6 pm
WHERE?
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Invalidenstraße 50/51,
10557 Berlin-Mitte
COSTS?
Ticket 12,00 EUR
Reduced 6,00 EUR
