Six exhibitions you should not miss

Museum outlook 2023

What good resolutions do you have for the new year? Maybe one of them is to go to the museum more often again? If not, make a note of this resolution on your list, because 2023 will be an exciting exhibition year in Düsseldorf. One that will test the permeability of genre boundaries with relish and roll out the red carpet for contemporary positions in particular. Several major retrospectives are on the agenda and, if you like, an exploration of the most diverse formats and disciplines - from sound art to photo art, from the artistic survey of a hybrid nature with the means of augmented reality to the marriage of art and social activism. Or would you like to get better acquainted with the work of a pioneering representative of classical modernism? Starting next fall, a renowned Düsseldorf museum will also be tracing the fascination of horror. Thrills are guaranteed!

"Sound space KIT: the space between your ears - Bojan Vuletić" at KIT.

04.-12.02.2023

An underground exhibition venue with a program that leaves a lot of room for the interdisciplinary - despite its limited square meters. The KIT, short for "Art in the Tunnel," is located between the tunnel tubes for car traffic under the Mannesmannufer. A rough concrete space that offers 888 square meters of walkable area and tapers off in the entrance area with a ramp. It is not least this unusual architecture that inspires extraordinary exhibitions, often involving music and sound. The Sonic Youth exhibition, for example, is unforgettable. In February, Klangraum KIT will present "the space between your ears", five expansive sound works by sound artist Bojan Vuletić. On the opening night, Vuletić will combine the installative art experience with a live performance: outstanding musicians from New York, London, Israel, and Germany will be guests. You know the name Bojan Vuletić well? Well, the man is co-founder of the Düsseldorf Asphalt Festival and set out to transcend boundaries of form and genre. His own compositional works range from chamber music to improvisation to pop. 

"Out of Sight. Andreas Gefeller Photographs" at the NRW-Forum

03.03.-14.05.2023

The often large-format works of the Düsseldorf photo artist Andreas Gefeller, born in 1970, have an immediate presence. But at the same time they are multidimensional, remain vague. Logical breaks in the image raise questions about perspective and the origin of what is depicted. Shot from a height of two meters and in thousands of individual digital images, for example, the works in the series "Supervisions" (2002-2015) show urban spaces such as prefabricated apartments, a parking lot, or the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. For his early series of works "Soma" (2000), Gefeller photographed vacation resorts on Gran Canaria - at night and with long exposures. In this way, something that is normally "out of sight" comes into view, as could be said with the help of the exhibition title. In the series "Flames" (2022), forms become visible that are reminiscent of 3D renderings or X-ray images. But the optical confusion that sometimes unfolds in Gefeller's work is not an end in itself. Through his experimental use of photography, the photo artist not only questions his own medium and, related to it, our perception of the world - his subject is always also the technologized society and its intervention in nature. The fact that Andreas Gefeller, whose works have been shown from London to Beijing, is now having his first retrospective in his hometown (60 works will be on display) is as gratifying as it is significant: Düsseldorf is and remains an international center of photographic art. 

"Jenny Holzer" at the Kunstsammlung NRW | K21

11.03.-06.08.2023

At the K21 in the Ständehaus, you will also be able to enjoy a retrospective when it opens in March - or, more precisely, the largest overview exhibition of Jenny Holzer's work ever to be seen in Germany. Born in 1950, the American artist is considered one of the most important artists of her generation. Her work? A fusion of art and language, poetry and activism. Holzer gained international fame through her "Truisms" - equally memorable and subversive one-liners that denounce political and social grievances. Since the late 1970s, the conceptual and installation artist has been bringing these to the public via various media. Initially via posters, then also by means of projections on house walls or LED lettering, for example. From the beginning, Holzer experimented with artistic formats and new technologies. Her work "Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise" inspired the #MeToo movement to its hashtag #notsurprised. But the artist's complex oeuvre is by no means reducible to her one-liners, as is also clear in the exhibition at K21. Presented here alongside Holzer's poster works are, among others, her paintings and the works in stone with which she addresses topics such as war and populism. But no matter which of her works you look at - what they all have in common is a profoundly democratic claim combined with the call to engage in a critical discourse about the challenges of the present. Discuss with us!

"AR Biennale: Hybrid Nature" in the Court of Honor

May till October 2023

When the AR Biennale premiered in the Ehrenhof in 2021, it did so as the world's first event of its kind. Next year, the NRW-Forum, organizer of the AR Biennale, will now present the second edition of the art event dedicated to augmented reality as an exciting contemporary form of representation. As in 2021, a digital sculpture park will be set up once again. The fact that its exploration will take you through the Ehrenhof and parts of the Hofarten on the one hand, while you enter a digital world via AR app and smartphone or tablet on the other, makes it extremely appealing - and deepens the theme of the AR Biennale 2023. "Hybrid Nature", it reads, and focuses on the fusion of nature, man and technology. The works of international artists and collectives such as Afroscope (Nana Opoku), Banz & Bowinkel, Nancy Baker Cahill, Okta Collective and Pau Jiménez are gathered together. In part, you can interact with them in real time. "In times of conflict and ongoing economic and ecological crises, nature has once again become an important place of retreat for people," say the organizers*. As part of the AR Biennale "Hybrid Nature", you can expect an expanded experience of nature, which is not least nourished by visions of a sustainable future.

"Chaïm Soutine" at the Kunstsammlung NRW | K20

02.09.2023–14.04.2024

His expressive but also drastic works reflect the attitude to life of an entire era: Chaïm Soutine, born in 1893, grew up in the former Russian Empire (today Belarus), moved to Paris in 1913, later also temporarily to the south of France, and became friends with the painter Amadeo Modigliani. He finds role models in El Greco, Velázquez and Rembrandt, whose works he admires in the Louvre, but also in Cézanne, van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard. In the early 1920s, Soutine achieved his international breakthrough as an artist. But outsiderness and brokenness remain the life themes of this important representative of classical modernism, who lived for a long time in extreme poverty in the Parisian artists' colony La Ruche. He painted dead animals, wavering landscapes, distorted portraits, often of people who, like himself, were struggling economically and socially. Chaïm Soutine was not only an immigrant, but also a Jew. The foreignness and uprootedness he felt throughout his life is the overarching theme of the exhibition at K20 and spans the arc to the present day. In Belarus, Soutine's work "Eva" 2020 became a sign of protest against the Lukashenko regime and, supplemented by a stinky finger, even adorned T-shirts.

"Death and the Devil. Fascination of Horror" at the Museum Kunstpalast

14.09.2023–21.01.2024

What do Alexander McQueen and Billie Eilish, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier and U.S. painter, conceptual artist and performer Eliza Douglas have in common? They all teach us to be creeped out at times. At least that's the working thesis of the exhibition "Death and the Devil. Fascination of Horror," with which the Museum Kunstpalast will lead us into the fall next year. Death and horror as a theme of contemporary art, but also of fashion, music and film - for the first time, a show illuminates the legacy and continuation of artistic strategies of horror. The spectrum of the 120 works on display ranges from classical painting and sculpture to elaborate installations. Positions of visual artists such as the Chapman Brothers, Berlinde de Bruyckere or Mary Sibande meet works of the US-American photo artist Andres Serrano, known for his photographs of corpses, or the blood-filled sneakers of the New York art collective MSCHF. Death metal is just as absent as the early horror films of the 20th century, which, in addition to historical testimonies of the "horror" genre from the Renaissance or Romanticism, serve above all to contextualize it. For in the main, the show gathers works from the past two decades. Horror disturbs and moves,, he provokes, fires the imagination and gets to the heart of things. This makes him productive for the future.

This article is supported by REACT-EU.

Title image: Düsseldorf Tourism