The top 5 exhibitions that I haven’t seen but would not like to miss.

1. Spuk! Leif Geiges’ pho­tographs.

Shuf­fling steps in the attic, a car­pet becomes a snake, bread rolls fly through the air like swal­lows … It’s haunt­ed! Or was it all just imag­i­na­tion? Maybe decep­tion or even fraud? Phe­nom­e­na that vio­late com­mon sense are often taboo. Nev­er­the­less, they exert an irre­sistible fas­ci­na­tion. In Freiburg they have even been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed and exam­ined since the 1950s.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er and pho­to jour­nal­ist Leif Geiges (1915–1990) worked for many years with the para­psy­chol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Hans Ben­der (1907–1991), who taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Freiburg. He accom­pa­nied him to haunt­ed inves­ti­ga­tions, dur­ing which the events described were recre­at­ed and pho­tographed. He also illus­trat­ed oth­er fields of research such as mag­i­cal prac­tices, for exam­ple the back of glass­es, and doc­u­ment­ed exper­i­ments on extra-sen­so­ry per­cep­tion in the Insti­tute for Fron­tier Areas of Psy­chol­o­gy and Men­tal Hygiene e. V.

For the first time, the exhi­bi­tion com­pre­hen­sive­ly presents the impres­sive visu­al mate­r­i­al, extracts from which appeared in mag­a­zines at the time of its cre­ation. It gives unique insights into a sci­en­tif­ic and social field of ten­sion in the post-war peri­od.

Until Sep­tem­ber 26, 2021 in the Augustin­er Muse­um in Freiburg im Breis­gau.
https://www.freiburg.de/pb/1666964.html

2. Müh­len­haupt meets Schinkel and Schad­ow.

Even if I am inter­est­ed in the work of the Kreuzberg­er artist Kurt Müh­len­haupt, what is even more excit­ing about this exhi­bi­tion is prob­a­bly the loca­tion: The base of the Kreuzberg mon­u­ment, in Vik­to­ri­a­park, on Kreuzberg:

On the occa­sion of the three round birth­days: 100 years of Müh­len­haupt, 100 years of Kreuzberg and 200 years of the Nation­al Mon­u­ment, Müh­len­haupt Muse­um will be show­ing an excit­ing exhi­bi­tion with works by Kurt Müh­len­haupt, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Johann Got­tfried Schad­ow in the pre­vi­ous­ly inac­ces­si­ble base­ment of the Nation­al Mon­u­ment on the Kreuzberg . The district’s road and green space office has set up a guid­ance sys­tem in the style of pop-up bike paths for coro­na-friend­ly vis­i­tor guid­ance with­in the premis­es.

In the approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 square meter vault, which has been pop­u­lat­ed by bats in the win­ter months for decades and main­ly serves as an art depot, unusu­al per­spec­tives emerge: We place the Ger­man­ic heroes from the demol­ished Tiele-Winck­ler Palace in the Tier­garten oppo­site and between Mühlenhaupt’s house­wife from Blüch­er­strasse the reliefs of the famous Schad­ow coin frieze and oth­er almost for­got­ten trea­sures of Berlin sculp­ture, Mühlenhaupt’s scant­i­ly clad girls cavort in front of the Vic­to­ry Col­umn. Clev­er­ly illu­mi­nat­ed, there are con­ver­sa­tions between char­ac­ters who at first glance have noth­ing in com­mon.

For the first time there will also be a re-encounter of a series of large-for­mat paint­ings, scenes from select­ed “dis­trict paint­ings” such as Tier­garten, Reinick­endorf, Span­dau, Wed­ding, Schöneberg and Steglitz. Kurt Müh­len­haupt paint­ed them in 1979 for the ICC press cen­ter – now they are return­ing to Kreuzberg for a lim­it­ed peri­od. Born exact­ly 100 years ago in poor con­di­tions in Berlin, the painter, sculp­tor, writer and bon vivant is con­sid­ered a sym­bol of the Kreuzberg bohemia of the 1960s. As a »painter of love« and the »milieu« he is one of the best-known Berlin artists of the post-war peri­od. The main motifs for him were the “lit­tle peo­ple” such as clean­ing women, wait­ers, beg­gars, street sweep­ers, pros­ti­tutes and chil­dren play­ing, which is why Müh­len­haupt was often com­pared to Zille.

Until August 1, 2021. In the base of the Kreuzberg mon­u­ment.
https://www.muehlenhaupt.de/veranstaltungen

3. Bruce Con­ner. Light Out of Dark­ness.

Bruce Con­ner (1933–2008) is leg­endary as much for his crit­i­cal view of the art world as for his rep­u­ta­tion as the father of the video clip. He is one of the out­stand­ing artists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and has even been hailed as an ‘artist’s artist’. The exhi­bi­tion «Bruce Con­ner. Light out of Dark­ness» at Muse­um Tingue­ly presents Conner’s exper­i­men­tal films with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive selec­tion of nine works and will be on view from 5 May to 28 Novem­ber 2021. Among these is CROSSROADS (1976), a film that assem­bles footage of the first U.S. under­wa­ter atom bomb tests at Biki­ni Atoll in 1946 into a 36-minute study on the hor­ror and sub­lim­i­ty of this apoc­a­lyp­tic event. His work in var­i­ous media is rad­i­cal and wide-rang­ing, at once haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and hor­ri­fy­ing­ly bleak; it is polit­i­cal, sub­ver­sive, and pow­ered by a sen­su­al imme­di­a­cy that gets under the skin. Many of his ear­ly col­lages, assem­blages and instal­la­tions are made of low-qual­i­ty, ephemer­al mate­ri­als such as nylon, wax or worn tex­tiles and hence are too frag­ile to be exhib­it­ed except on very rare occa­sions. Conner’s anar­chic stance was defined by his caus­tic irony, bound­less ded­i­ca­tion, and insis­tence on keep­ing as far away as pos­si­ble from the art mar­ket.

Until Novem­ber 28, 2021. Muse­um Tingue­ly, Basel.
https://www.tinguely.ch/de/ausstellungen/ausstellungen/2021/bruce-conner.html

4. Yay­oi Kusama: A Ret­ro­spec­tive.

Yay­oi Kusama: A ret­ro­spec­tive cov­ers almost 3000 m² of key cre­ative peri­ods from over 70 years and includes a num­ber of cur­rent works, includ­ing a new Infin­i­ty Mir­ror Room.

One of the main con­cerns of the ret­ro­spec­tive is to trace the devel­op­ment of Kusama’s work from ear­ly paint­ings and accu­mu­la­tive sculp­tures to immer­sive spaces of expe­ri­ence and, in par­tic­u­lar, to work through her pre­vi­ous­ly neglect­ed artis­tic activ­i­ty in Ger­many and Europe.

Until August 15, 2021. Gropius Bau, Berlin.
https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/de/gropiusbau/start.html

5. The world of the Nebra Sky Disc – New Hori­zons

The State Muse­um of Pre­his­to­ry in Halle (Saale) is show­ing the major state exhi­bi­tion ›The World of the Nebra Sky Disc – New Hori­zons‹ from June 4, 2021 to Jan­u­ary 9, 2022. We present the results of research on the sky disc over the past 20 years in a unique com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al sci­ence, arche­ol­o­gy, social the­o­ry and art. New finds and find­ings from Sax­ony-Anhalt are sup­ple­ment­ed by high-rank­ing objects, some of which have nev­er been shown in Ger­many, from over 50 lenders from 14 coun­tries and pre­sent­ed in a tried and test­ed exclu­sive design. These include, for exam­ple, the gold­en cape of Mold (Wales), the gold hat of Schif­fer­stadt and rich grave finds from Myce­nae. The objects cov­er a peri­od of 1,400 years of human his­to­ry and illus­trate the wealth and diver­si­ty of an era that is clos­er to us than we pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pect­ed.

Until Jan­u­ary 9, 2022. Lan­desmu­se­um für Vorgeschichte, Halle (Saale).
https://www.landesmuseum-vorgeschichte.de/sonderausstellungen/die-welt-der-himmelsscheibe-von-nebra-neue-horizonte/uebersicht.html