Worlds in Motion 30 Years Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

Miracle of space

The space is where you’ll find it is the title of the instal­la­tion by Michel Majerus through which visitors enter the exhibi­tion. Spaces determine our existence.

Their design influ­ences our conscious­ness. In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the spatial experi­ence of cathe­drals such as De Nieuwe Kerk [New Church] in Amsterdam, depicted in the painting by Emanuel de Witte (c. 1617–1692), was intended to emphasize the divine message of the Christian Church. Today, museums are often referred to as the cathe­drals of the present.

The diversity of spatial experi­ences is reflected in the works in this room: In the Gehäu­se­gravur [Case Engraving] by Pia Linz, the artist has drawn her studio from the inside onto the panes of the Plexiglas case, making it appear as an immate­rial model of her studio. Bruce Nauman explores the relati­onship between wall and floor with his body, while Adam Putnam squeezes himself into his furniture to relate its interior space to the volume of his body. Erwin Wurm, on the other hand, gives visitors instruc­tions on how to position themselves and behave as living “sculp­tures” in relation to the space and its furniture.

Who are you?

Roman emperors were worshipped as gods after their death, some of them even during their lifetime. This is also alluded to in the marble bust of Emperor Hadrian (76–138 AD).

Today, Elizabeth Peyton immor­ta­lizes not only royal figures in her colorful paintings, but also idols from the film and music indus­tries. The opposite of this immor­ta­lity can be found in the life-size metal head of the artist Christian Keinstar: With this, he refers to his own transi­ence by the fact that his own head, cast in gallium, liquefies and disap­pears even at the slightest increase in the tempe­ra­ture of the base.

With his Andy Warhol Robot, Nam June Paik expressed his admira­tion for his late artist colleague. Mette Tronvoll juxta­poses young urban women with older women from the country­side. Tejal Shah questions the unambi­guous­ness of gender in her series Women Like Us, while “mean old men” served as models for Thomas Schütte’s United Enemies. The fact that it is not always possible to remember faces can be seen in Luc Tuymans’s largely empty picture Hair:  Here, the only thing the painter remembers about the person portrayed is the hairstyle. In contrast, the face with the three emoti­on­less metal eyes in the portrait A.O.: INRI (The Measu­re­ment of Sensation) by Thomas Zipp seems almost timeless. The title and the use of graph paper as a support for the picture question the measura­bi­lity of emotions.

Body language

Lucas Cranach the Elder depicts his Venus wearing only an almost invisible veil, a hat, and golden chains. The Roman goddess of love and beauty is a recurring figure in Cranach’s paintings, serving as a metaphor for sensua­lity, female attrac­tion, and the creation of new life.

Like Cranach’s Venus, the women in Nobuyoshi Araki’s Tokyo Novelle series are charac­te­rized by sensua­lity and physical attrac­tion. Kinbaku-bi, which roughly trans­lates as “the beauty of tight binding,” is a Japanese bondage technique that focuses on the aesthe­tics and repre­sen­ta­tion of the body. In Stefan Thiel’s silhou­ette work, this body remains absent, its form merely hinted at by the arran­ge­ment of geometric shapes that come together to form a kind of fishnet stocking. In the photo­graph from Cindy Sherman’s Sex Pictures series, the human body is also absent, replaced by an anato­mical doll arranged in pseudo-porno­gra­phic compo­si­tions. It offers an oppor­tu­nity to reflect on the artifi­cia­lity, absurdity, and occasional violence of porno­graphy. Fuck by Gilbert & George is part of their Dirty Words series and includes, among other things, the artists’ faces, the rooftops of London, and an implied prosti­tu­tion scene. In the end, it remains ambiguous—is the title meant as a profanity or as an invitation?

Family matters

Four majolica plates from the 16th and 17th centuries depict scenes from the biblical story of Jacob and his twelve sons. The story can be read as one of the earliest accounts of a dysfunc­tional family.

Joseph, the second youngest son, is favored by his father and thus incurs the wrath of his brothers. The majolica plates show, among other things, the brothers attemp­ting to drown Joseph in a well and later selling him into slavery in Egypt.

Richard Billingham’s photo­graphs are also far removed from the idea of an ideal family—unembellished and almost brutally honest, Billingham’s series Ray’s a Laugh shows his family home near Birmingham, which is charac­te­rized by poverty, chaos, and a chroni­cally alcoholic father. A father figure also plays an important role in the work of Jonathan Meese; his ambiva­lent character is already evident in the title of Babydolls Vater (Not am Mann) [Babydoll’s Father (In Need of a Man)]. In contrast, three photo­graphs by Antanas Sutkus from the 1960s convey a childlike sense of security in the hands of parents, a trust in the adults to whom one looks up—quite literally in this case.

Among people

Sometimes things can get pretty crazy when you go out among people—at least that’s what it seems like in William Hogarth’s etching titled Night, in which we can observe a whole series of events, portrayed quite humorously, but with a socio-critical undertone.

In Sook Kim’s Satur­day­Si­mi­larly, Sook Kim’s Saturday Night depicts the more or less wild nighttime activi­ties that might take place in the anonymity of a hotel. Bruce Nauman inten­si­fies the situation of anonymous coexistence—his heads always look past each other, despite their close proximity. In contrast, Rebecca Lewis’s photo­graphs, which immerse us in the subcul­ture of the so-called mods in England, highlight the sense of community: United by aesthetic and habitual codes, the mods quote the 1960s with great attention to detail.

Situa­tions of together­ness can also be experi­enced in Gauri Gill’s photo­gra­phic series, in which she focuses on the Indige­nous Adivasi popula­tion in an Indian village. In colla­bo­ra­tion with the villagers, she stages specially made masks to transform banal everyday situa­tions into theatrical acts.

Ute Behrend’s diptychs show moments of growing up and finding one’s way in society. They oscillate between melan­choly and exuber­ance. In Jeff Koons’s work, social roles are turned upside down: An oversized “plush bear” in a striped shirt takes the whistle from the uniformed policeman, who suppo­sedly repres­ents power and authority. In dialog, Timm Ulrichs’s red neon lettering makes it clear how close love and rebellion are in our society.

Forms of nature

Ever since humankind began to appro­priate nature, it has been incre­a­singly trans­formed. This is sometimes done in an idealized way, as in Willem van Nieulandt’s Italie­ni­sche Flußland­schaft [Italian River Landscape] (c. 1625–1630) with its depiction of ancient ruins.

However, the But the trans­for­ma­tion of nature is even more pronounced when it comes to the imple­men­ta­tion of economic interests, as can be seen in Andreas Gursky’s photo­graph of the artifi­cial recla­ma­tion of land for the Port of Singapore, which is now filled with skyscra­pers. Agricul­tural use, as shown in Timm Ulrichs’s Getarnte Landschaft [Camou­flaged Landscape], also lends the Earth’s surface a distinc­tive character.

Constantly renewing life is the focus of the instal­la­tions by Mario Merz, whose spiral-shaped table and wall piece titled Leone di Montagna [Mountain Lion] express the law of growth repre­sented in the Fibonacci sequence: Here, brushwood, fruit, and vegeta­bles or mountain, tree, and animal refer to the basis of human life. The law of growth disco­vered by Leonardo da Pisa, also known as Fibonacci (c. 1170–after 1240), manifests itself in the form of snail shells as well as in the develo­p­ment of rabbit popula­tions. The principle of growth is whimsi­cally alluded to in both Nam June Paik’s video instal­la­tion Egg Grows and Benedikte Bjerre’s flock of chickens.

Urban life

Today, more than three-quarters of Germany’s popula­tion live in cities—a very different situation from the time of Hendrick van Steenwyck the Elder in the 16th century.

Nevertheless, his Markt­platz mit Aachener Münster und Rathaus [Market Square with Aachen Cathedral and Town Hall] shows a crowded city scene, which, in part, is not so different from the urban hustle and bustle of today.

In contrast, the streets of Wolfsburg in Douglas Gordon’s Psycho Hitch­hiker (Coming or Going) seem rather empty. The people in their cars do not seem to want to stop for the hitch­hiker, who makes a rather ominous impres­sion with his naked torso and the sign “Psycho.” Gordon addresses the perceived danger of the stranger in urban space. Gilbert & George also focus on the street as an image of urban life in their large-format work titled Roads. Young men in brightly colored outfits walk and pose in front of city highways, conveying the image of a vibrant and pulsating city. The fact that this can sometimes be quite overwhel­ming is reflected in the distorted faces of the two artists.

World views

The image we form of the world is The image we form of the world is shaped by the time and the external circum­s­tances in which we live.

Abraham Willa­erts’s Strand­bild mit Kirchturm [Beach with Church Tower] (1653), for example, shows ships setting sail from the Nether­lands in the 17th century to “discover” the world, bearing, from today’s perspec­tive, clear traces of European imperia­lism and colonia­lism. Natalie Ball addresses the effects of this, parti­cu­larly on the Indige­nous popula­tion of North America, in detailed assem­blages such as Stick Horse. She counters stereo­types with multi-perspec­tive views of the world. Chris­to­pher Kulendran Thomas also questions the Western art system and its values when he acquires and criti­cally trans­forms works by Sri Lankan artists. He makes it clear that they were created to suit the tastes of the Western art market—and in doing so, deliber­ately diverts its money flows into social projects in Sri Lanka.

Andreas Gursky’s Dubai World III shows the megalo­mania of modern construc­tion schemes using the example of a project in the emirate to represent the world in the form of artifi­cial islands. Mariana Vassileva contrasts this with an image that can also be read in relation to the human use of resources—the exploited world as a sad puddle. Georg Herold’s Weltbild 2000 [World View 2000]relies on a calcu­lated incom­ple­teness, ironi­cally questio­ning the apparent self-evidence of world­views with its compo­si­tion of wooden slats. Burhan Doğançay’s Big Berlin Wall, in which the four world religions come together on the Berlin Wall, once a symbol of separa­tion, expresses the desire for the peaceful coexis­tence of different worldviews.

A question of justice

In a great arc, the world gets rid of justice—at least that is what a print by Dirk Volkerts­zoon Coornhert from 1550 shows. The world, symbo­li­cally depicted as a rearing horse, throws justice, in the guise of the Roman goddess Justitia, off its back—presumably a critique of imperial oppres­sion in the Nether­lands at the time.

Tejal Shah’s Unbeco­ming VIII also shows a form of political protest. Here, Shah draws on a photo­graph of a Tibetan monk who self-immolated in 2014 as an act of protest against the repres­sive policies of the Chinese government. The artist thus confronts us with the individual’s sense of hopel­ess­ness in the face of govern­mental injustice. Serge Attukwei Clottey also addresses issues of global (in)justice in his work by incor­po­ra­ting parts of yellow plastic canisters. Origi­nally used to import oil into Ghana, the canisters were repur­posed as water contai­ners during droughts and thus speak to global imbalances in terms of resource scarcity, as well as of the effects of global warming and neo-colonial processes. In this context, the title of the charcoal drawing Queer Notion of Justice probably refers to the lack of justice towards Black people. Perso­ni­fi­ca­tions of justice are depicted in Pieter Hugo’s series of photo­graphs of members of the Supreme Court of Ghana. It is striking how much the influ­ences of former British colonial rule can still be seen today in the use of robes and wigs. Bruce Nauman’s video work, in which he alter­nates between black and white makeup, focuses on issues of discri­mi­na­tion and racism.

Memory

Memory defines our conscious­ness. Without it, there would be no civiliz­a­tion, no society, no future. Remem­be­ring is crucial to our identity and creates a sense of social belonging.

In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne was the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine muses. The German art historian and cultural scientist Aby Warburg (1866–1929) named an ambitious research project, his Bilder­atlas [picture atlas], after her. In it, he used illus­trated panels to show the many ways in which antiquity lives on in European culture. About a hundred years later, Mischa Kuball’s video instal­la­tion of the same name focuses on the attempts to recon­struct this unfinished project. Here, it becomes apparent that Warburg’s Bilder­atlas is a construc­tion of collec­tive memory to which we, as viewers, become witnesses. In another project, his series research_desk_Nolde/Kritik/Kuball, Kuball criti­cally examines the reception of the work of the painter Emil Nolde (1867–1956).

Sharon Lockhart’s series of photo­graphs from the National Museum of Anthro­po­logy in Mexico City also shows that culture owes its existence to tradition and thus to memory. In the series, it becomes evident that the museum, as a place of preser­va­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion, always provides the framework in which artifacts are unders­tood and remem­bered through archi­tec­ture, exhibi­tion design, and texts such as labels and explana­tions. The twelve painted certi­fi­cates of authen­ti­city by Sandra Gamarra also point to the fact that cultural conscious­ness owes itself to construc­tions and prede­ter­mined structures.

We the people

“Freedom requires equality”, argued the theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). In the 17th-century painting Das König­liche Hochzeits­mahl [The Royal Wedding Feast] by Frans Francken the Younger, a king invites people from the street to his son’s wedding feast.

This unusual gesture, borrowed from the biblical parable in the Gospel of Matthew, is based on a Christian concept of equality. It is juxta­posed here with works that refer to the funda­mental political and social values of recent history.

Robert Lebeck’s photo­graphs, for example, bear witness to the political events of the tumul­tuous year 1968, which heralded a radical change in the Western hemis­phere. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Georg Herold exposes the hammer and sickle, signs of communism, as empty symbols, while Andreas Gursky’s Bundestag [German federal parlia­ment] shows the elected repre­sen­ta­tives of the people in conver­sa­tion. Vietna­mese artist Danh Vō repli­cated the American Statue of Liberty and then disas­sem­bled it into indivi­dual parts, titling them We The People in reference to the first three words of the United States Consti­tu­tion. Goran Tomčić’s dazzling image Say Something was created in response to the government measures in New York after the attack on September 11, 2001, while Mariana Vassileva’s micro­phone is shaped like a hand grenade and refers to the poten­ti­ally explosive effects of words. In many different ways, the works testify to the pursuit of basic human values and the right to self-determination.

Economic summit

The Felsen­land­schaft mit zwei Arbeitern [Rocky Landscape with Two Workers], attri­buted to Tobias Verhaecht, is one of many depic­tions of working people in the 17th century. They provide an insight into the daily life, occup­a­tions, and social struc­tures of the time.

They are not always realistic depic­tions of actual working life, but often contain idealized or symbolic elements, such as the city in the background, which promises prospe­rity and wealth.

In contrast, Thomas Schütte’s Dreiakter [Three-Act Play] seems like a commen­tary on the so-called Wirtschafts­wunder [economic miracle] of the postwar period in Germany: It begins with mass produc­tion in a gloomy atmos­phere, followed by the VW emblem as a symbol of economic develo­p­ment, and finally waving flags against a blue background, conveying joy and confi­dence. Andreas Gursky’s empty Prada display case also promises successful marketing, but in this case, the brand seems to be more important than the inter­ch­an­ge­able products on display. His diptych of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange highlights the question­able status of the people who work there, integrated into a globa­lized economic system: They function as numbers, crammed into a structure of data machines. Who serves whom here?

Neo Rauch’s painting Handel [Trade] also takes a critical look at giving and taking: The customer has burned her hand on the “goods” on offer. In Benedikte Bjerre’s warehouse, on the other hand, there is nothing to buy. The inflated suitcases stand for global mass tourism and its question­able achievements.

Borders and dreams

An etching by Charles Nicolas Cochin shows just how old the theme of flight and migration is. The depiction of Israe­lites crossing the Red Sea seems depres­singly familiar against the backdrop of the ongoing flight to Europe.

The Inter­na­tional Organiz­a­tion for Migration (IOM) reports the deaths of more than 3,000 people fleeing across the Mediter­ra­nean in 2023 alone.

Tejal Shah’s series Unbeco­ming can be seen in this context. Carefully trans­forming photo­graphs of people who have died while fleeing by boat into detailed, hand-colored figures, she brings to light the failure of border crossings as a result of flight and migration. In her series Les Mains [The Hands], Anna Malagrida depicts the typical gestures of punters in a Parisian betting shop for horse races, mostly North African migrants, whose stories combine the dreams and hopes inherent in gambling with the desire for a better life that often underlies migration.

The chain-link fence, which is printed on a mirror in the work Politics of Space by Awst & Walther, simul­ta­ne­ously includes and excludes us. The reference to German history is evoked by the juxta­po­si­tion with Jörg Immendorff’s Kleine Reise (Hasen­sülze) [Small Trip (Hare Aspic)], which deals with the former inner-German border in 1990, one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Above it all, Goran Tomčić has assembled an airplane from hologra­phic foil, hovering in the blue sky, a cynically glowing promise of freedom and boundless travel.

Visions of the future

The question of the future was so important in ancient Greece that there were several oracles (from the Latin oraculum, “divine announ­ce­ment”) were located throughout the country.

The Greeks and Romans believed that the gods would appear at these sites and predict the future. Since then, an oracle has been defined as a trans­cen­dental revela­tion obtained through ritual or a medium and used to answer questions about the future or important decisions. John Dixon’s 1774 etching entitled The Oracle, depicts Time, perso­ni­fied as an angel, projec­ting the image of a future situation onto the wall using a so-called laterna magica (a pre-modern projec­tion device) .

The owl on Ann Lislegaard’s large LED screen also seems to have some knowledge of the future. The title Oracles, Owls… Some Animals Never Sleep (Borealis) already suggests that this is not a natural animal. Its speech is difficult to interpret and is repeatedly distorted or inter­rupted by technical noise. A closer inspec­tion reveals a reference to Ridley Scott’s science fiction film Blade Runner, which deals with the falsi­fi­ca­tion of reality and contem­porary percep­tions of reality,.

The object suspended from the ceiling, to which Phyllida Barlow has subtitled Security Camera, is also unsett­ling. With three lens-like elements, it seems to register every movement in the room.

On the road to new destinations

Mobility, and with it travel, is now seen by many as a funda­mental right. As the painting Gebirgs­land­schaft mit Reise­wagen [Mountain Landscape with Carriage], attri­buted to Jacques Fouquier, shows, in the 17th century traveling by wagon and peasant cart was still an arduous affair.

People traveled only when there was good reason to do so, usually of a profes­sional nature. The demand for tourism, travel as an end in itself, did not emerge in Europe until the 18th century, and then only for very few people. Today’s widespread desire to travel is a develo­p­ment of the modern age.

With his painted view from a train window, Eberhard Havekost created an unfor­gett­able image of being on the move: As long as you look at the painting, as if you were actually looking out the window, you are on the move. You have left a place and have not yet reached your desti­na­tion. It is a state of temporal suspen­sion that Havekost creates here.

Since 1991, Franz Ackermann has been creating Mental Maps on his numerous travels: small-format water­co­lors and gouaches that form the core of his multi­layered oeuvre. He records his impres­sions in a fusion of carto­gra­phic struc­tures, views of places, and proli­fe­ra­ting ornamen­ta­tion, thus alluding to the close connec­tion between globa­liz­a­tion, mobility, and tourism.

In 1967, Panama­renko built his first flying machine and called it Das Flugzeug [The Airplane]. His goal, however, was “not to construct a functio­ning airplane, but to create an ideal” (Panama­renko). It is with the imagi­na­tion that one moves.