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The exhibition and catalogue focus on Corinth's career and his great influence on the city's art scene, but also on his formative private environment. Less known topics also show how modern the artist painted, lived, and thought: Corinth's painting school, where he primarily taught women, and his work for the Berlin theater.
Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) is one of the most important representatives of German Impressionism. Born in East Prussia, the painter studied in Königsberg, Munich, and Paris before rising to become a leading figure of the Berlin Secession. His extensive oeuvre ranges from portraits to nudes and landscapes. At the beginning of the 20th century, he became one of the most important representatives of modern art.
Turning what architect Rem Koolhaas famously referred to as “junkspace”, the spatial flotsam of the Anthropocene, into candy-coloured dreamscapes, George Byrne depicts the gritty urbanism of Los Angeles in sublime otherworldliness. Arriving a decade ago, the Australian artist was immediately enthralled by the sprawling cityscape, mesmerized by the way the sunlight transformed it into two-dimensional, almost painterly abstractions, underpinned by a distinctive pastel color palette. Extending his practice beyond the confines of the lens by extracting elements from various images, his series Post Truth dwells in the liminal space between real and imagined. Reassembling the urban landscape into striking, ascetic collages of color and geometric fragments, Byrne creates postmodernist oases in the metropolis that masterfully harness the malleability of the photographic medium. Byrne’s compositions evoke associations with Miami Beach’s Art Deco, the Memphis Group’s designs, as well as the work of David Hockney or Ed Ruscha, and at the same time tap into the specific aesthetics of today’s visual culture played out on Instagram. They are filled with a sense of suspended reality—and never fail to convey a feeling of joy.
Born in Sydney in 1976, GEORGE BYRNE graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2001, and traveled extensively before settling in Los Angeles in 2010. Today, he is internationally recognized for his large-scale photographs shot with medium-format film. Byrne has exhibited internationally and is currently represented by galleries in Sydney, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Oslo, Mumbai and Taipei. In 2020, he was named the Minimalist Photographer of the Year.
ALBRECHT DÜRER (1471–1528, Nuremberg) is one of the most significant artists of all time in the German-speaking world. He lived at the turn of the Late Gothic and Renaissance periods and profoundly shaped both epochs: the Late Gothic as an innovative master, the Renaissance as a curious, creative, and influential co-creator. His extensive oeuvre includes more than 100 engravings, approx. 250 woodcuts, and more than 1000 drawings.
From the Renaissance to modernity, from botany and architecture to painting and sculpture: Hans von Trotha takes us on an inspiring journey that illuminates gardening in all its facets. The garden becomes the stage for philosophy, design, literature, and technology, demonstrating how worldviews and aesthetic trends develop and are reflected within it. This book is a must-have for lovers of garden art, art history, and for anyone who wants to discover the diverse facets of the garden as a cultural phenomenon.
HANS VON TROTHA (*1965) is a renowned German historian, author, and journalist specializing in garden literature and the history of garden art. After studying literature, history, and philosophy in Heidelberg and Berlin, he published numerous works on the cultural history of the garden. His well-known publications include "The English Garden" (1998), "In the Romantic Garden" (2016), and "The French Garden - Around Paris" (2022). His acclaimed novel "Pollak's Arm" (2021) about the famous Laocoön statue has been translated into several languages. Hans von Trotha is considered one of the leading voices in garden art history, passionately conveying the cultural and historical significance of gardens and landscapes with great expertise.
In this book, Werner tells of his childhood during World War II and the struggles of finding his way. He reports on artists with whom he worked, argued, failed spectacularly, and achieved great successes. His accounts, together with photographs and documents, not only form an impressive contemporary testimony, but also show that the artistic tensions that emerged back then are far from fully explored.
Michael Werner, born in 1939, is a German art dealer and gallery owner. His gallery Michael Werner, now based in Berlin and which, over the course of his long career, was also represented in Cologne, London, New York, Paris, and Athens, is one of the most internationally influential galleries in post-war history. With it, he sustainably established artists such as Georg Baselitz, A. R. Penck, Markus Lüpertz, Jörg Immendorff, Per Kirkeby, Marcel Broodthaers, and Sigmar Polke.
Nils Emmerichs, born in 1988, studied art history and philosophy in Düsseldorf, Basel, and Karlsruhe. He earned his doctorate on the influence of visual arts on Heiner Müller's work. For the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, he supervised and curated exhibitions by Michael Majerus, Olaf Nicolai, and Andreas Schulze, and conceived a series of events with Rosemarie Trockel. As an author and editor, he has published texts on Marcel Odenbach, Leiko Ikemura, Ulrich Rückriem, and A. R. Penck, among others.
Captured with a smartphone and a DSLR camera, Lars Eidinger's new photographs were taken in locations such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Shanghai, Istanbul, Berlin, London, Tehran, Sydney, and Paris. They are accompanied by a text from Peter Sloterdijk.
Lars Eidinger (*1976) is one of the most distinguished actors in film and on stage. As a DJ or as an interpreter of Bertolt Brecht's "Hauspostille," he fills venues nationwide. His photographs and video films have been exhibited at institutions such as K21 of the Kunstsammlung NRW, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and Galerie Ruttkowski;68. A solo exhibition titled "Who's there?" is planned for autumn 2026 at the Kunsthalle Tübingen.
Belgian colonialism in the Congo. Anti-Semitism in Austria. Turbo-nationalism in former Yugoslavia. Over the last two centuries, these three historic lines of violence and annihilation (re)enforced a process of oblivion that to this day prevents a processing of the genocides they caused. Today, involuntary or performed amnesia again threatens to destroy what has already come to a point of possible coexistence. This exhibition catalogue goes back to these traumatic events in history and the recent past, which had such a violent impact on communities and people, states and territories, and confront them with a system of interventions. The scars that remain after atrocities, although hidden and obliterated, are recovered through artistic, scientific, and political reflections.
Participating artists Valerie Wolf Gang Nicolas Pommier Joëlle Sambi Nzeba Adela Jušić Lana Čmajčanin Bojan Djordjev Sinisa Ilic Dani Gal Monique Mbeka Phoba Anja Salomonowitz Martin Krenn Arye Wachsmuth Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe
“She, a woman of high beauty, created like no other to be Medea, Madonna, Iphigenia, Aspasia, decided one sunny winter day to escape her loneliness and to leave La Rotonda. She bought a ticket ‘Aller jamais retour. Berlin Tegel’.” This is the opening scene of Ulrike Ottinger’s momentous 1979 film Ticket of No Return—the woman of high beauty was Tabea Blumenschein. Unconcerned by all conventions, Blumenschein adored transformation: in a distinctive, avant-garde aesthetic, the two women embraced various different identities and challenged many norms, in the process revealing the performativity of gender. Initiating a dialog between the two artists’ perspectives, these books bring together for the first time Blumenschein’s drawings with Ottinger’s photographs from their joint performance sessions.
ULRIKE OTTINGER (*1942, Constance) is one of the most import- ant German filmmakers. Moving to Berlin in 1973, she became a pioneer of avant-garde cinematography. Ottinger’s photographic works, feature films and documentaries have been shown at major international festivals and retrospectives, including the MoMa in New York, Berlinale, the documenta and the Venice Biennale.TABEA BLUMENSCHEIN (1952–2020) was a cult figure of West Berlin’s queer feminist subculture in the 1970s and 80s. For about ten years, she played a key role in Ottinger’s films as leading actress and costume designer, and was part of legendary avant- garde punk collective Die tödliche Doris. In the 1990s she withdrew from the public, yet remained active as an artist until her death.
Alexander von Reiswitz (*1965 in Málaga) lives and works as a photographer and architect in Berlin. His projects with "studio animal portraits" such as "Zoogestalten" and "Animal Stars" have been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide.
“Eight years after moving from New York City to Berlin, a feeling of alienation still haunts me. I wander the streets alone at night, camera in hand, trying to find my place in my latest 'home.’” What does "home" mean when one is a stranger living in another country? Artist Romeo Alaeff explores this question in In der Fremde: Pictures from Home, a haunting, cinematic, and evocative survey of Berlin as seen through the lens of an eternal outsider. Framed by Alaeff’s complex familial background, spanning from Yemen to the former USSR, Poland, Israel, and the United States, the photographs are tinged with a deep sense of longing and touch on themes of migration, belonging, and the search for home. Inspiring essays by Yuval Noah Harari, Christian Rattemeyer, Charles Simic, Eva Hoffman, Rory MacLean, Joseph Kertes, and Romeo Alaeff illuminate a wide horizon of perspectives.
ROMEO ALAEFF (*1970, Brooklyn) lives in Berlin. Originally studying biomedical engineering, he received a BA in photography from Tulane University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His works, which often deal with epistemological, psychological, or sociological issues, are exhibited worldwide.
Whether in works of art or in scientific research, only the results of the creative process have been visible in both art and science. What happens behind closed doors in labs and studios remains as invisible as it is mysterious. The Berlin-based artist and professor of visual arts Stefanie Bürkle (*1966) has now taken on these unfamiliar sites of creation by photographing laboratories and art studios throughout Berlin. Her photographs feature deserted spaces for development and thought, full of materials, tools, experiments, and set-ups whose purposes remain hidden from viewers, which nevertheless allow us to imagine great things. Stefanie Bürkle’s photographs are, in a certain way, about the alchemists’ labs of the present time. They explore the analogies between experimentation and process in both the studio and the laboratory, making it possible for us all to see these workshops of knowledge for the first time.
Exhibition:
1.2.–3.3.2019, Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
Image credits © Uta Neumann © Florian De Brün
OTTI BERGER (1898 – 1944) was one of the most important textile designers of the 20th century. Born in Zmajevac, in what was then the Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia, she studied from 1921 – 1926 in Zagreb, and from 1927 at the Bauhaus in Dessau. After teaching at the Bauhaus, she became self-employed in Berlin in 1932 and designed fabric collections for modern interiors throughout Europe. In 1936, as a Jew, she was banned from her profession; attempts to flee to England and the USA failed. In 1944, she was deported from Croatia to Auschwitz and murdered there.
The visual artist and art historian JUDITH RAUM (*1977), as a result of several research projects on the Bauhaus weaving workshop, is a specialist in Otti Berger's work. This book concludes her multi-year cooperative project with the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, for which she has for the first time comprehensively researched Berger's estate, which is scattered across archives worldwide.
Edouard Baribeaud’s (*1984) art is influenced by his bilingualism and bi-cultural background. The son of a French father and a German mother, he grew up in France, studied in Paris at the École Nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, and has lived in Berlin since 2010. In his works he not only unites different styles, but also allows the everyday to meet the mythical, guiding archaic figures through modern surroundings, and combining actual experiences with imaginary memories. Baribeaud proves that he is a brilliant craftsman and storyteller who draws us into fantastical scenes that fluctuate between East and West.
Baribeaud’s first monograph presents the following groups of works: The Hour of the Gods (2014-2015), The Nocturnal Vault (2015-2017), and An Old Story for Our Modern Times (2018), along with the artist’s Hermès scarf (2016), accompanied by essays by Imran Ali Khan, Pay Matthis Karstens, and Sabine Thümmler.
EXHIBITION:
Galerie Judin, Berlin
28.4.–9.6.2018
Further information about current events with Lars Eidinger can be found here.
LARS EIDINGER (*1976, Berlin) is considered one of Germany's most distinguished actors, celebrated for his expressive performances of great performative power as a long-standing ensemble member of the Berliner Schaubühne, as well as for his profound and at the same time almost tenderly sensitive portrayals in film. Building on his first photo book, Eidinger increasingly gives photography more space as a form of expression and a means of self-exploration.
There is more to numbers than sums; they can also conceal histories, too. In this case, world-famous architectural history. For five years the renowned Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was closed to the public for renovation. Nevertheless, the photographer Michael Wesely was able to accommodate “four guests” inside the iconic building: four cameras, each one pointing in a different direction, were installed on the ceiling. Every day they took between 360 and 730 pictures with an exposure time of 90 seconds each. Edited into bewitching montages, this fascinating synopsis allows readers to envision the building’s metamorphosis as it was undergoing renovations. The long exposure time is an aesthetic coup, for ephemeral, restless, rapid movements contrast with the still, timeless quality of the architecture, presenting a sophisticated interplay of identity and change.
This book is published on the occasion of the re-opening of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, August 2021. It is a slightly altered special edition of the original numbered edition of April 2021.
The photographer MICHAEL WESELY (*1963) is a celebrated master of the long exposure. His precise approach to this photographic technique, tailored to each object, brought him world renown. His unique aesthetic can be found in numerous exhibitions and collections around the globe. He lives in Berlin.