Joseph Beuys – Works from the Nationalgalerie Collection

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin

Exhibition documentation, 2024

This series documents the presentation of Joseph Beuys’s works in the Kleihueshalle at Hamburger Bahnhof. The commission focuses on installation views that trace the dialogue between Beuys’s environment DAS KAPITAL RAUM 1970–1977 and a selection of sculptures, drawings, multiples and archival material, showing how the museum stages his oeuvre in relation to its critical reception and to contemporary perspectives on social and artistic transformation.

Exhibition text by Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

The Hamburger Bahnhof is presenting its extensive holdings of works by the artist Joseph Beuys (1921–86) in the Kleihueshalle.

Comprising 15 key works by Joseph Beuys, the new presentation in the Kleihueshalle explores the artist’s complex oeuvre and critical reception. Alongside his environment DAS KAPITAL RAUM 1970–1977 (1980), the parcours includes sculptures, drawings, multiples and ground-breaking actions such as I like America and America likes Me (1974). The exhibition examines the ways in which Beuys’s work questioned the nature, materiality, language and perception of the boundaries and tasks of art. At the same time, it contextualises and compares Beuys’ vision of a slow social transformation with historic and contemporary countermodels by Grace Lee Boggs, Angela Davis, Agnes Denes, Donna Haraway among others.

[Text source: Hamburger Bahnhof]