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ART | WORKS ON PAPER | ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN

RESET: THE SAMMLUNG MODERNE KUNST 2016

Press preview: 20.07.2016, 11.00 a.m.

With RESET, the Sammlung Moderne Kunst presents a fresh start for the works in its collection. New acquisitions encounter well-known but rarely-shown works in an exciting and unusual dialogue between featured artists. The starting point is the European avant-garde movements of the 1910s and 1920s: Expressionism, Bauhaus, Neue Sachlichkeit and Surrealism. Transcending boundaries of space and time, , Francis Bacon, Anselm Kiefer, Arnulf Rainer and Georg Baselitz become neighbours; Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline and Jasper Johns meet Palermo; Cy Twombly encounters Wolfgang Laib; while Willem de Kooning meets Andy Warhol. German and American photography meet on the “Outskirts”, where they tell the story of their reciprocal influence. Joseph Beuys remains the milestone and centre point of the new hang. Across the rotunda, Beuys’s End of the Twentieth Century sparks a dialogue with installations by Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, but also with contemporary environments by Pipilotti Rist and Thomas Hirschhorn.

MODERN ART Important new acquisitions have prompted a reorganization of the collection display, highlighting new aspects of early twentieth century art. In the Expressionist area of the Pinakothek der Moderne, Ferdinand Hodler’s Student from Jena and Edvard Munch’s Woman in a Red Dress highlight art’s new beginnings in the early twentieth century. For the first time, the traumatic experiences of “Apocalypse and the First World War” are given a room of their own, including two Expressionist works in the tradition of the Christian Passion: Red Christ by and Dead Christ by Wilhelm Gerstel. The spectrum of 1920s and 1930s art has been expanded by important loans: Max Beckmann’s Self-Portrait in bronze from 1936 and Wilhelm Lachnit’s Woman with Rose, from the same year, are particularly noteworthy. For the first time, art from the Nazi period (1933–1945), including both “degenerate” and conformist art, is given its own gallery. A cabinet devoted to the Fohn Endowment presents a selection of outstanding works on paper, by artists ranging from to . These works were originally part of the Museum’s collection of so-called “”. They were exchanged by the artists Sophie and Emanuel Fohn for their own collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century art, thus saving the modernist works from being sold off or destroyed.

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OUTSKIRTS | RANDLAGEN The 1975 exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” marked the emergence of a new artistic vision within American photography. It centred on landscapes affected by human beings, depicting these spaces in a visual language at once objective, analytic and non-judgmental. Protagonists of the new style included Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams and Stephen Shore, all now regarded as canonical, as well as Bernd and Hilla Becher, the only European artists to participate in this ground-breaking exhibition. Taking early, iconic works as a starting point, the approximately 110 pictures exhibited here also encompass German photography up to the 1990s, and supplement this with a selection of contemporary artists, including recently acquired works by Sven Johne and Katharina Gaenssler. All the works shown here form part of the documentary tradition, but also renew and update it. The documentary style examines the present state of urban, suburban and rural environments, while also revealing change, disclosing the traces that time and history leave behind.

PIPILOTTI RIST: HIMALAYA GOLDSTEIN’S LIVING ROOM In the installation Himalaya Goldstein’s Living Room, everyday furniture and video projections blend together with light and soft music, forming a richly associative environment. The sensuous materiality of the setting is overlaid with flickering film images, projected from out of armchairs, small tables and lamps. Like ghosts, the moving images light up the darkened ambience, blurring the lines of objects and levels of reality. They contribute significantly to the magical atmosphere of the room, where the spectator is invited to sit down on the sofas and chairs. In Himalaya Goldstein’s Living Room, interior and exterior, public and private, times and cultures all overlap.

THOMAS HIRSCHHORN: DOUBLE GARAGE The installation Double Garage by Thomas Hirschhorn appears like a mixture of workshop and hobby basement. Under huge mushrooms, model trains go round their tracks, passing through landscapes made of paper held together with brown sticky tape. Photographs from magazines show ruined cities and injured people. Fragments of text invoke power and responsibility. The piece clearly addresses fundamental categories of human feeling and action: violence and counter-violence, revenge and reconciliation. The work’s starting point is the events of September 11, 2001, which reflect the complex interconnections, cultural differences and economic interdependencies of the age of globalization. ‘Art is a tool for me to confront reality. Art is a tool to experience the time in which I live’, Press information

says Hirschhorn, one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Hirschhorn was born in 1957 in Bern, Switzerland, and now lives in Paris.

RESET is supported by:

Beginning in October, RESET will be accompanied by an extensive programme of events, including lectures and podium discussions. This programme is supported by:

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For more information and press images contact: tel. +49 (0)89 23805-118 or email [email protected]

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