The Kunsthalle is currently closed for install, the Café Kunsthalle is closed until October 24. We kindly invite you to the opening of Sarkis – 7 Tage, 7 Nächte on Friday, October 27, from 7pm onwards.

The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to world-renowned conceptual artist Sarkis (born 1938 in Istanbul, lives and works in Paris), whose work links the social to the conceptual profoundly, calling for the merging of practices and cultures. The exhibition is the product of a year-long exchange with the artist, focusing on art, history, and trauma, and institutions as spaces for reflection, participation and community. It will open to the public on October 27, 2023 at 7 pm.

Participating Artists

Mutlu Çerkez with Antonia Baehr, Juliet Carpenter, Jesse Darling, Julian Dashper, Egemen Demirci, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Léuli Eshrāghi, Marco Fusinato, Delia Gonzalez, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, On Kawara, Hanne Lippard, Callum Morton, Serkan Özkaya, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Jeff Wall Production, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres

From July 14 to October 8, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents an experimental exhibition format: “Auditions for An Unwritten Opera” reintroduces for the first time in Germany the multi-layered oeuvre of the artist Mutlu Çerkez (1964-2005) to a larger audience by multiplying the solo presentation into a constellation of installs and exhibits. The opening program starts on Friday morning at 11 am with blessings and Spectral Arrows, a durational noise-guitar improvisation by Marco Fusinato. It will lead to an opening speech by another close collaborator and friend of Çerkez, Callum Morton, followed by statements from the Kunsthalle team, and participating artists, later evolving into celebrations with sharing food, memories, music, and dance.

by Marysia Lewandowska

As part of the SYNCH series, Polish-born, London based artist Marysia Lewandowska continues her interest in archives, museums and exhibitions investigating the mechanisms which contribute to creating discursive social structures of public exchange. For the past two years her critical engagement with Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden focused on conversations regarding governance, public participation and collective authorship. These have now resulted in a new installation taking as its point of reference the history of the institution through the 1989 Donald Judd exhibition.

Space Synthesis

Space Synthesis is the first solo exhibition of artist and composer Jan St. Werner. Werner has accompanied the Kunsthalle’s program since 2021 as house artist, realizing several projects on site and in the city of Baden-Baden. With the Space Synthesis exhibition, Werner transforms the Kunsthalle into a sound space, using the building as a large instrument. The works composed for the exhibition explore human thought about sound in dialogue with architecture. Werner’s work adheres to the concept that everyone perceives sounds differently. The Kunsthalle becomes a living body of work in which art and architecture merge in a transdisciplinary way.

Osman is an ongoing performance work by artist Mehtap Baydu (lives and works in Berlin). Mr. Osman will officially try to become a citizen of the city of Baden-Baden and register as a citizen for a certain period of time. A stereotypical representation of the labor force that came to Western Europe from Turkey in the 1960s, Osman explores forms of belonging and coexistence.

with artworks and archive material by

Yael Bartana, Tracey Emin, Rebecca Horn, Stephan von Huene with Yasuhiro Sakamoto, Jürgen Klauke, Eva Koťátková, Oleg Kulik, and Emeka Ogboh

About the exhibition

The archive presentation An Imaginary Audience, part of the exhibition series SYNCH, is based on a comprehensive research for investigating the exhibition history of Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden through performance art. This endeavor includes performativity as an artistic tool and the transition of the audience from a receiver into a user, performer, and participant in the digital age.

With Whiteface, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents a focused solo exhibition by South African artist Candice Breitz. Two video-based installations from the artist’s long-standing oeuvre—Whiteface (2022) and Extra (2011)—are juxtaposed to stimulate conversations around race, privilege and the asymmetrical politics of representation within cultures that have been shaped by white suprematist ideology.

HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees?

Concept and direction: Yvonne Rainer, aided by research and inputs from the dancers. Assistant director: Pat Catterson. Performed by Emily Coates, Brittany Bailey, Brittany Engel-Adams, Patricia Hoffbauer, Vincent McCloskey, Emmanuèle Phuon, David Thomson, and Timothy Ward. Guest performer: Kathleen Chalfant.

About the project

“HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees?”, a new work by dance and film pioneer Yvonne Rainer will have its European premiere at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden on January 27, 2023. It represents the culmination of sixty years of an oeuvre encompassing in choreography, filmmaking, writing, and teaching – an iconic body of work that has had a transformative impact on several generations of artists across the world.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

“All dressed up and nowhere to go” is a major solo exhibition by Guadeloupe-born French artist Jimmy Robert (*1975). Through a chronology of early to recent performance, video and film works, the exhibition presents the artist’s multimedia oeuvre of the last 20 years.

Artists

Michael Akstaller, Cansu Çakar, Karin Cerny, Olga Chernysheva, Egemen Demirci, Ipek Duben, Alia Farid, Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Will Fredo, Malina Heinemann, Nicole L’Huillier, Joseph Kadow, Stelios Kallinikou, Kavachi, Grada Kilomba, Robert Lippok, Nicholas Mangan, Mateja Meded, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Hani Mojtahedy, Ersan Mondtag, Murat Önen, Manuel Rossner, Christoph Schäfer, Muhannad Shono, Sorawit Songsataya, Ayman Zedani, a.o.

About the exhibition

From climate change to drought, isolation politics to recession, armed conflicts to authoritarian regimes, many of our existential questions, planetary problems and global crises can be formulated only in reference to these two terms; nature and state. The investigation of continuity and disobedience, possible forms of transformation of the state and the genealogical relationships between future and past are at the center of this project.