On September 11, 2024, as part of Berlin Art Week, the exhibition Durchdringen: Das U/unheimliche s/Sehen will open at the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank. Two special features await visitors: Michael Müller is the first artist to curate an exhibition on our premises. In addition, the extensive temporary conversion of the exhibition rooms will enable a completely new viewing experience. The exhibition ends on December 8, 2024.
Image above: Exhibition view “Durchdringen: Das U/unheimliche s/Sehen“ (Inter/Penetration: The Uncanniness of Seeing), Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024 (Max Uhlig, René Graetz, Armando), © Michael Müller, Hirschvogel; Photo: Natalia Carstens Photography
Perfectly lit, placed at eye level and carefully labeled – this is how art is usually presented at the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank. Much is different in the new exhibition. A wedge-shaped black installation dominates the exhibition space on the first floor. Visitors have to step into the darkness to reach the art. The room gets lower and lower – you literally have to adopt a different perspective and scan the pictures with your eyes to make out details in the sparse light.
The unconventional staging puts our viewing habits to the test. A superficial glance in passing is not possible. The works of art only reveal their secrets and open up spaces for interpretation when viewed intensively.
This visual experiment was conceived by the German-British artist Michael Anthony Müller. As guest curator, he “penetrates” the art collection of the Berliner Volksbank – selected works from the collection and other loans appear in a new context through his gaze. The presentation he has put together prevents the possibility of classifying artists and works according to conventional aesthetic, historical or stylistic categories.
In terms of content and atmosphere, Müller focuses on the uncanny, which Sigmund Freud describes as the once familiar that has been repressed. When that which should remain hidden and “secret” emerges again, it becomes the “uncanny”.
In the second part of the exhibition on the upper floor, Müller responds to the works in the Berliner Volksbank art collection with his own art. Visual barriers and unusual hangings challenge visitors to change their usual perspectives and search for deeper meanings in the dialog between the pictures.
Highlights of the exhibition include Aufwärts im April (1956) by Gerhard Altenbourg, which Michael Müller has integrated into a work of his own, Michael Müller’s video The attempt to be abstract under hypnosis, which shows the creation of the drawings Session on Friday, May 2 (2007), which are also on display, and Hans Bellmer’s etchings Heinrich von Kleist: Les Marionettes (1969), which refer to Kleist’s text Über das Marionettentheater.
With Durchdringen: Das U/unheimliche s/Sehen, the Stiftung Kunstform Berliner Volksbank and Michael Müller invite the public to question familiar ways of looking at things and to discover the ambiguous.
The exhibition shows over 100 works by 23 artists
Gerhard Altenbourg, Armando, Roger Ballen, Hans Bellmer, Asger Carlsen, Rolf Faber, Galli, René Graetz, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, Bertold Haag, Martin Heinig, Hirschvogel, Ingeborg Hunzinger, Leiko Ikemura, Aneta Kajzer, Max Kaminski, Henri Michaux, Michael Müller, Michael Oppitz, Cornelia Schleime, Stefan Schröter, Werner Tübke, Max Uhlig
About Michael Müller
In his works, the German-British artist Michael Anthony Müller (* 1970) deals with the aesthetics and visualization of complex thought processes, which he questions in terms of their sensual experience and material content. Based on historical narratives, scientific methods, social norms and systems of language and numbers, he develops an artistic formal language that repeatedly pushes these systems and structures to their limits. Müller expresses himself through a wide range of media – from painting and sculpture to installations and performances. He lives in Berlin and exhibits his work internationally. From 2015 to 2018, he taught as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Wednesday, September 11 – Sunday, December 8, 2024
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm
WHERE?
Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank
Kaiserdamm 105
14057 Berlin-Charlottenburg
