Preview 2020

EXTENDED UNTIL 19 JULY 2020

FOREVER YOUNG – 10 YEARS MUSEUM BRANDHORST

Quite a bit has happened at the Museum Brandhorst since its opening in May 2009. In addition to mounting a string of special exhibitions, the museum has expanded its collection from 700 to over 1200 works. Today one of the most significant museum collections of contemporary art anywhere in Europe, it boasts major works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, and Wolfgang Tillmans. The museum celebrates its tenth anniversary with an exhibition drawn from ist holdings that traces an arc from the early 1960s to the present. In addition to well-known highlights, a slew of new acquisitions made since 2009 will be presented for the first time.

 
17 JANUARY UNTIL 19 APRIL 2020

SPOT ON: THOMAS EGGERER AND JANA EULER

Grand painterly gestures and performances are often attributed to the masculine. Style, format, and the application of paint are all linked to a notion of masculinity—but also motifs, and even entire painting movements, if we consider Abstract Expressionism. This has resulted in a conception of painting that has been nourished by both the artist and the viewer. In the works of Jana Euler and Thomas Eggerer, we encounter responses to and alternative versions of these painterly forms of expression. In his monumental painting Waterworld (2015), Eggerer transfers—not without a certain irony—his subject of a civil leisurely stroll into a scene depicting the isolated parallel existence of self-centered, exclusively male figures. In Euler’s Great White Fear series, the sharks emerging from the water with fear written all over their anthropomorphized faces become the expression of a paradigm shift in society as a whole.

17 JANUARY UNTIL 19 APRIL 2020

SPOT ON: JOSH SMITH

Since 2001 New York-based artist Josh Smith (b. 1976, Tennessee) has focused on a single motif or an isolated image idea in his painting series, which he then repeats in variations. The repertoire of subjects displayed in the collection presentation includes diverse topics such as sunsets, stop signs, and his own signature. By robbing these motifs of their singularity through continuous reproduction, Smith deprives the painterly gesture of its personal element.

The expressive gesture becomes the formal means with which Smith is able to contemplate painting through painting. The exhibited collages and a series of bar stools that have been customized with Smith’s handprint in a standardized manner also reference his artistic strategy, in which the technique itself is elevated to become the central concept.

FROM 2 MAY 2020

SPOT ON: BOOKS FROM THE BRANDHORST COLLECTION

For the Museum Brandhorst, artists’ publications play a significant role in both their collection and their program. With exhibitions such as Reading Andy Warhol (2014), Ed Ruscha: Books & Paintings (2013) or Picasso Artists’ Books (2010), the importance of books as an artistic medium has been repeatedly brought to the fore. This Spot On exhibition presents notable recent acquisitions from the last few years that address the book as a space for reflection and a formal medium on the one hand, and as a site of political debate on the other.

With books and works by Richard Artschwager, Paul Chan, Jacqueline Humphries, Arthur Jafa, Kara Walker, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, and many more.

10 SEPTEMBER 2020 UNTIL 21 FEBRUARY 2021

LUCY MCKENZIE

A formidable painter known for her deployment of illusionistic trompe l’oeil effects and architecturally-scaled installations, Lucy McKenzie (b. Glasgow, 1977) quickly established herself as one of the most exciting artists of her generation.

Developed in close collaboration with the artist herself, and featuring over 100 works dating from 1997 to the present, the exhibition will for the first time examine the full scope of her oeuvre. It will bring together examples from all of the artist’s significant bodies of work, including early paintings relating to pop music and Cold War-era Olympic games; her subsequent engagement with the traditions of Scottish and Eastern European muralism and Belgian illustration; and large-scale paintings based on historic architectural styles. Also included are the collaborative fashion label and research bureau Atelier E.B.; recent works blurring the lines between painting, sculpture, and furniture; as well as new works commissioned especially for the exhibition.