The presentation takes a comprehensive look at the collection of contemporary art, which is presented anew from different perspectives in twenty rooms. In addition to painting, installations, film and photography can be seen. The exhibition includes works that are important for the profile of the collection along with new acquisitions, gifts and loans from private collections. It combines monographic and thematic groups of works from Sigmar Polke to Monika Baer, from Tamara Grcic, Shannon Bool and Norbert Schwontkowski all the way to John Bock.

A complex pathway arises for encountering the works: Outside and inside spaces can be walked into, are measured cartographically, are opened into uncertain interiors; the body is declared to be a battle zone; faces transform themselves into masks, the self plays various roles. Painting reveals itself to be tangled texture and smooth surface, orderly and disorderly overlapping, an alchemical mixture of exoticism and popular culture. Materials engage in extended discussions, photographic series gather the world into flexible repositories, painting and photography investigate the simultaneity of the clear and the unclear. The museum becomes a “space for imaginative actions” (Albert Oehlen).

WITH WORKS BY (SELECTION):

Adam Adach, Horst Antes, Monika Baer, Bernhard Johannes und Anna Blume, Reto Boller, Shannon Bool, Ulla von Brandenburg, Michael Buthe, Christo und Jeanne-Claude, Ger Dekkers, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gefeller, Gregor Gleiwitz, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tamara Grcic, Anton Henning, Charline von Heyl, Maximilian Kirmse, Jürgen Klauke, Imi Knoebel, Michel Majerus, Rune Mields, Susanne Paesler, Blinky Palermo, Alexandra Ranner, Erich Reusch, Gerhard Richter, Ulrich Rückriem, Tomás Saraceno, Felix Schramm, Kristina Schuldt, Norbert Schwontkowski, Rosemarie Trockel, Mark Weggemann und Thomas Wrede.