Chapters of the exhibition something new

At first glance, communication appears to be as straightforward as it is essential. Yet many attempts at communication run the risk of being misunderstood or misguided. This can be true for bold public LED messages (Jenny Holzer) as well as for seemingly casual embroidery works filled with sexist con­tent (Annette Messager) – or even the relationship between humans and animals. In a large-scale video work (Annika Kahrs), giraffes encounter an octobass, a giant stringed instrument, at Hamburg’s Hagenbeck zoo. Yet the low tones of the music and the animal sounds are not fully audible – and therefore inaccessible – to the human ear. A European tourist in Mexico (Simon Fujiwara) highlights problems of communication between people from different continents who speak different languages. Fujiwara dictated letters to Mexican street typists in English and addressed these missives to Europe. The communication problems, however, begin immediately, with »Dear Europe« becoming misunderstood as »Dir Jurop«.

The structures, manifestations, perils, and limits of power are negotiated in the most diverse ways. Centralized locations where power is exercised (Thomas Demand) or economic power structures (Simon Denny) reveal their socio-political dimensions. An oversized metal fence (Cady Noland) con­veys an image of belonging and exclusion. The social structures and socio-political power relations that influence all of our lives are revealed by the artworks in this thematic group.

In our society, children are very often at the mercy of unbalanced power relations. The character Clara literally has a target around her neck (Pia Stadtbäumer). The full extent of violence to which children are sometimes exposed becomes clear in a poignant sound piece that is played in an empty room (Almut Linde): A nine-year-old girl who was forced into prostitution on the German-Czech border sings children's songs about an ideal world and her desire for a different life. A video (Paul McCarthy & Mike Kelley) depicts interfamilial abuse, and battered cuddly toys awaken ambivalent feelings of love and distress (Annette Messager).

Materials are constantly changing over time. Through contact with their surroundings, light, oxygen and other elements, their appearances, textures and forms change. Artists often take advantage of these changes by taking into account the chemical and physical processes and their effects on mate­rials, and, in some cases, even making them the subject of their work. The aesthetic qualities of transformation are examined (Edith Dekyndt) or the interplay between materials is brought into focus (Nina Canell). The monumental floor work Measurements of Time, Seeing is Believing (Richard Serra) reveals the solidification of lead that started out as liquid. Temporality and processes of change be­come tangible.

Unique, individual works can emerge from serial working processes and structures. Tobias Putrih takes advantage of the slight changes that occur as the original imperfections become more and more am­plified during the repeated repainting of a circle. Ultimately, a large, organic sculpture emerges from the developed form due to the playful handling of the material, the repetition, and the resulting effects. The individual aluminium elements of Robert Morris' Untitled (16 units) can be set up in a variety of ways. Although the elements appear to be identical, and the material itself is relatively rigid, they gain a certain lightness and liveliness through the modular design, the openwork structure, and the incoming light. The artist’s use of variations and slight alterations causes the work to extend into the room, beyond its material boundaries.

Annette Kelm has photographed the covers of books that were published between 1913 and 1944, were put on the Nazi’s list of »harmful and undesirable literature« and were thus targeted for book burning. The photographs of these books are taken head-on and presented matter-of-factly on a white background. On the one hand, they refer to the liberal, urban zeitgeist and the context in which they were created. On the other hand, the sober way they are photographed and their series-like arrangement removes them from their original era and makes the books seem up-to-date.

Annette Kelm’s photographs of banned books are juxtaposed with Jannis Kounellis' traces of soot. Like the rest of the works in this exhibition space, both reveal interventions, assaults, and targeted exclusions. Kounellis’ work, with its shadowy traces of soot on the wall, is reminiscent of the subject of Annette Kelm's work: the burning of books. Andreas Slominski's G black negotiates questions of exclusion, but also of self-imposed isolation through the use of an industrially manufactured black garage door. Aspects of persecution and fatal exclusion carry on in the next room, where Cordula Ditz’s multimedia installation recounts the story of 16-year-old Helmuth Hübener, a Hamburg teenager who resisted the Nazi regime.

For thousands of years, human beings have explored the connection between body and spirit. Artists have also been preoccupied with this topic throughout the ages. The works in this room exemplify the diversity of artistic exploration. A Station of the Cross, the only completely preserved room installation by the American artist Paul Thek, who died in 1988. Thek understood art as a form of worship. In alternating line-ups, photographs by Jürgen Klauke and Günter Brus enter into a dialogue with the sacred and religious art of Paul Thek, adding existential and self-deprecating aspects in their examinations of the human body.

Artists such as Sara Sizer, Hannah Rath, and Fernando de Brito use various forms of the line in their work. This can be through the woven fabric of textiles, the painterly lines of writing, the traces of rhythmic strokes, or the shadows cast on the wall by Hannah Rath's delicate net threads. The works are similar to systems of lines found in textiles and are representative of human communication, and the interconnections and ties throughout our (global) world. The artists are exploring questions of how materiality, line, and language are perceived, and examining their substantiality and attributions. Their structures and movements in space, as well as their limitations, become visible and physically tangible for the viewer.

Few things seem as obvious as the landscapes we inhabit. And yet our perception is ultimately shaped as much by our expectations and experiences as by our seemingly objective sensory impressions. Simon Modersohn and Bernd Koberling deal with this phenomenon. They transform their subjects with the help of painterly means, such as their choice of details and colour, and how they apply that colour, thus forming enigmatic and unsettling scenes out of what are basically unspectacular landscape depictions. In his film collage, Tilman Walther works with images of rural and suburban spaces as they appear in various computer games from the 2010s. Here too, it becomes clear that the reality of the film is a produced montage, influenced by the identities and experiences of its creators.

Everyday objects are sometimes so familiar that we hardly notice them anymore. Painters like Almut Heise and Simon Modersohn, however, deliberately bring the overlooked into focus. Heise, for example, depicts seemingly familiar interior scenes that, through their intense colour and the absence of anything living, direct our gaze to the smallest details and endow them with an unsettling quality. Modersohn achieves something similar by monumentalizing individual objects and placing them at the centre of his compositions. One of his paintings, entitled Kleines Theater (Little Theatre), shows a charred pizza in the inside of an oven, an object that reveals something about our everyday lives, functioning as a so-called “psychogram”. It becomes clear how meaningful the objects and the architecture we surround ourselves with really is in relation to our inner lives, our states of mind, and our mentalities.

The relationship a person has to their environment is one of their most essential relationships and can significantly influence our lives. Just as we are shaped by our environments, we in turn influence and shape our lived-in worlds. This is clearly revealed in models constructed by Thomas Schütte, Jan Köchermann and Stephen Craig, who reflect on and rethink architectural forms. Other works address our created environment and its influence in different ways. Artists such as Axel Loytved and Raymond Hains use found objects as the basis for their artworks in order to deal with the fast pace of everyday life and the potential to be found in the »waste« generated by our consumption-oriented world.