Hamburger Kunsthalle
February 2020
February 7–August 2, 2020 Experiences of loss grief, and change harbor a disturbing potential that is difficult to put into words and nearly impossible to depict. This exhibition brings together contemporary artworks by international artists that revolve around these experiences. Whether the loss of a loved one through separation or death, departing from cherished ideals and visions, or being deprived of one’s home and familiar surroundings—we all have to grapple with painful incidences of disappointment, failure, and irreversible change at some point in our lives. Although these experiences affect each of us differently, the way we cope with, describe and assess them also depends to a great extent on our cultural, social, and political environment.
How do artists today picture leave-taking, grief, loss, and change? What role is played by traditional formulas for expressing pathos and by universally legible symbols? And what does the way we deal with grief tell us about our present-day world? In the pictures, sculptures, videos, photographs, installations, slide projections, and sound pieces presented, some thirty international artists from fifteen countries engage with the theme of loss as a distressing experience of existential uncertainty that irrevocably changes the course of events. The complexity of the theme is illustrated in chapters such as “Melancholy and Mourning,” “Grief and Gender,” ”Collective Grief,” “Mourning and Rebellion,” “Forms of Leave-Taking,” and “The Inability to Grieve.” Featured artists: Bas Jan Ader, Kudjoe Affutu, Khaled Barakeh, Christian Boltanski, Helen Cammock, Anne Collier, Johannes Esper, Sibylle Fendt, Seiichi Furuya, Paul Fusco, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Aslan Ġoisum, Ragnar Kjartansson, Maria Lassnig, Jennifer Loeber, Ataa Oko, Adrian Paci, Philippe Parreno, Susan Philipsz, Greta Rauer, Willem de Rooij, Michael Sailstorfer, Thomas Schütte, Dread Scott, Rein Jelle Terpstra, Rosemarie Trockel, Tilman Walther, and Andy Warhol.