House of Balagan
With well over 100 works by more than 80 artists, the exhibition fills both the spacious hall and all the display rooms of the Philara Collection.
The exhibition presents a focused yet representative selection from Gil Bronner’s collection, which today comprises almost 2,000 works. The exhibition is complemented by selected works from the collection of Bronner’s parents, who shaped their son’s interest in art from an early age. Also on display are works from the collections of his children, Philip and Lara, after whom the exhibition venue is named.
With HOUSE OF BALAGAN, the Philara Collection highlights the breadth and diverse connections within its holdings: large-scale installations by Melissa Gordon or Tarik Kiswanson sit alongside small, intimate paper drawings by Rosa Loy or Corinne von Lebusa.
Ignacio Uriarte’s ring binder *Circle* (2014) explores the aesthetics and functionality of office supplies. Gil Bronner’s very first acquisition, with which he laid the foundations for his collection in Barcelona in the early 1990s, is also on display in the exhibition: the painting *Der Seher* (1990) by the Spanish artist Miguel Ángel Campano.
Christoph Westermeier’s photographs offer us further, very personal insights. They provide a glimpse into his parents’ private home as well as into Bronner’s own flat and collection. Another section of the exhibition focuses on specific themes, such as physicality. Anys Reimann’s collage *Die Nacht* (2021) and the paintings *End. Résumé #6 (2025) and ScreenColors 2 (2025) by Heidi Hahn and Rita Ackermann use very different artistic means to draw attention to the embodiment of femininity. Other works, for example by Matthias Weischer, Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Cerith Wyn Evans, explore themes of domesticity and domestication.
Many of the works also have a socio-political or historical-political context: In his drawing *Die sind nun Minister* (1924), George Grosz alludes to the Reichstag elections of the Weimar Republic in 1924 and their repercussions, whilst Hanne Darboven explores representations of time. The artist collective General Idea, founded in 1968 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, created fictional coats of arms over several years as part of their investigations into language, symbolism and aesthetics, which reflect the impact of mass media, including advertising. Sarah Morris, for her part, explores the psychogeography of urban environments and their architecture in her large-scale, sometimes graphically reminiscent paintings.
In addition, the exhibition features several artists from the East German art scene, including Christoph Ruckhäberle, Sebastian Gögel and Nadin Maria Rüfenacht.
Another section of the exhibition is devoted to a solo presentation of selected works by Marcel Dzama, some of which come from the Gil Bronner Collection. Curator: Hannah Niemeier. (Source: Philara Collection)
Exhibition dates: 27 June 2026 to 14 February 2027.