Exhibitions

The Berlin art scene of the 1980s is back. In the summer of 2025, the Berlinische Galerie presented a retrospective of Käthe Kruse, who was a member of the artist group and band 'Die Tödliche Doris'. The Weserburg in Bremen is set to become the first museum to present a comprehensive retrospective of the entire group. Founded in the punk movement by Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen, who were both still studying at the Berlin University of the Arts at the time, the group combined strategies from Warhol's Factory with influences from Fluxus, punk, wave, concept art, and anarchic and post-structuralist thinking. Active between 1980 and 1987, the group's membership was in constant flux, and it combined strategies from Warhol's Factory with influences from Fluxus, punk, wave, concept art, and anarchic and post-structuralist thinking. 'Doris' was not a star or a solo artist, but rather an amoeba-like network: an avant-garde meme that produced music, noise, light, strip shows, performances, films, books, gossip, furniture, paintings, object art, vinyl records, fashion, and radio plays — even an application for a seat in the Berlin Senate. The Bremen exhibition shows how groundbreaking this artistic work was, and explains why the group still has such a legendary reputation today.

Die Tödliche Doris auf dem Festival der Genialen Dilletanten, West-Berlin, 1981

In the past, Edvard Munch (1863–1944) would have been considered a genius and placed among the pantheon of modern, mostly male painters. However, it is not only the renowned British artist Tracey Emin who holds Munch in high regard; she has dedicated performances, paintings, and a monumental, maternal sculpture to him in front of the Munch Museum in Oslo. His work inspires younger generations of artists who view it through a fresh lens. Consequently, it is fitting to present his work alongside that of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), an icon of the feminist avant-garde. She is now considered a pioneer of radical body-related art movements such as Viennese Actionism and female body art. Both artists created a style of painting that was both physical and spiritual. For both artists, painting was a means of radical self-questioning. This double exhibition, titled 'Malfluss = Lebensfluss' (Painting Flow = Life Flow), will be the first time they have been shown together. It features over 180 works, including numerous major pieces, as well as rarely exhibited paintings, works on paper, films, photographs, and sculptures.

Maria Lassnig (1919–2014)
Ohne Titel (Schreiende), 1981
Bleistift, Aquarell auf Papier
627 x 438 mm
Maria Lassnig Stiftung
© Maria Lassnig Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Foto: Roland Krauss

Born in 1976, Duane Linklater is a renowned Omaskêko Cree artist who is currently taking the international art world by storm. Hailing from Ontario, Canada, he belongs to a younger generation of Indigenous North American artists re-examining the consequences of settler colonialism, genocide and the erasure of Indigenous culture and memory in contemporary contexts. Working with video, performance, installation and sculpture, Linklater also criticises the museum and the way it represents power, conveys history, and communicates values and knowledge. Dealing with indigenous art, spirituality and practices such as hunting and the fur trade, Linklater also reflects on the digital world, pop culture and the Western art canon. In doing so, he questions notions of folklore and traditional artistic production. He works with industrial and found materials, as well as high-tech and conceptual approaches, often collaborating with his family and other artists. 'Cache', the title of his first institutional exhibition, is reminiscent of temporary computer storage. His scaffolding sculptures, covered with tarpaulins, address the storage or preservation of data, objects and memories. These industrial modules house paintings, objects, and personal items which are not intended for immediate use, but rather for long-term storage which is inaccessible to the public.

Duane Linklater, teŝipitakan_cache_1, 2024, Installation view, cache, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, 2024. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography, Courtesy Catriona Jeffries.

Thomas Bayrle is to German art what Kraftwerk is to music: a legend. His career has spanned 60 years. Closely linked to the history of the Deutsche Bank Collection, Bayrle anticipated the digital pixel aesthetic as early as the 1960s, and his paintings and prints have always been at the cutting edge of contemporary technology. Almost everyone is familiar with his images, in which the repetition, interconnection and interweaving of individual elements create a shimmering overall motif of cars, stars, logos, athletes or everyday objects. The structures of consumption, work, urbanity, technology, transportation, pop and mass culture, and (substitute) religion all play a central role. 'Be happy!' was a guiding principle that he often imparted to his students. For Bayrle himself, this was a philosophy of life and an artistic and political stance. It is a fitting motto for the current times.

Thomas Bayrle, Kim Kardashian XII, 2021, Pigmentdruck auf Papier, 98 x 87 cm
© Thomas Bayrle, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Foto:
Wolfgang Günzel

Heidi Specker is one of the most significant contemporary German photographers. With her cool, objective yet poetic approach, she has influenced subsequent generations. In collaboration with her photography class at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, she is currently exploring the political and emotive work of Käthe Kollwitz at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. The museum's collection features an extensive array of Kollwitz's works. On display are drawings, etchings, lithographs and woodcuts from 1892 to 1938.

Key groups of works, such as 'A Weavers' Revolt', 'Peasants' War' and 'War', are presented alongside self-portraits, portraits of workers, and depictions of mothers and children. Contemporary photographs, prints and sculptural and film installations explore central themes such as self-representation, the body, motherhood, war, class, violence, protest and translate them into the present day.

Heidi Specker
B.F., 2016
Fotografie
Foto: Heidi Specker © Heidi Specker

When Ise Frank married the renowned Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius in 1923, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee acted as their witnesses. For Gropius's sake, she gave up her own career and entered the service of the Bauhaus as a secretary, editor and organiser, as well as an 'equal partner'. The Bauhaus ideal became her 'second self', as she later put it. She had a decisive influence on her husband's work, wrote and took photographs, and emigrated with him to the USA. Yet, to most people, she remains 'Mrs Bauhaus'.

Her photographs are now on display in a major exhibition demonstrating just how bold and avant-garde Bauhaus women's photography was and showcasing their pioneering spirit. With over 300 photographs from the Bauhaus Archive's collection, this is the first exhibition to comprehensively document the significance of these artists and their work. The spectrum ranges from representational portraits and architectural photography to abstract, experimental photography. Prominent figures such as Marianne Brandt are represented alongside many lesser-known female photographers whose works have become iconic.

'Written Art' transcends the boundaries of text and image. It refers to sculptures or site-specific works that can be 'read' or perceived as texts, revealing hidden structures, symbols, and political commentary. A new exhibition at PalaisPopulaire brings together works from the Written Art Collection – arguably the most comprehensive collection of modern written art from after 1945 – with works from the Deutsche Bank Collection. The exhibition showcases the work of around 30 artists from Europe, the USA, the Middle East, Japan, and China.

The spectrum ranges from calligraphy — both gestural and poetic — to political and conceptual works. Many artists use written art to reflect on themes such as violence, war, migration and colonialism. There are some fantastic discoveries to be made, such as the work of Shiryû Morita (1912–1998). A master of modern Japanese calligraphy, he influenced post-war Western abstraction. Other prominent figures featured include Etel Adnan, Natalie Czech, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, Slavs and Tatars, and Lawrence Weiner.

Etel Adnan
The Linden Tree Poems, 2019
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026. Courtesy the Artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Based in Berlin, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have been working together since the mid-1990s, establishing themselves as two of the most influential queer artists of our time. In the broadest sense, they are sculptors, but they also work with installation, performance, and architecture. Through their art and interventions, they repeatedly challenge the status quo and address the historical and political context of places and institutions, often examining these critically with humour. They are doing just that at the Städel with 'Still Life with Vegetables'.

Visitors will encounter sculptures and installations by Elmgreen & Dragset in unexpected places that interact with the architecture and the Städel Museum’s collection, which spans over 700 years. The conventions of viewing, collecting and representing art are thoroughly shaken up in the process, drawing attention to details that are often overlooked. Embarking on a treasure hunt, visitors will find two large installations in the Contemporary Art Collection at the heart of the exhibition, which unfolds throughout the entire building — including the neighbouring Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection — featuring sculptures and interventions by the artists.

Foto: Studio Elmgreen & Dragset
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Robert Gordy (1933–1986) was a Louisiana native and a unique phenomenon in American painting, something of a maverick. His graphically elegant and often ornamental paintings draw on Art Deco and Surrealism, while also foreshadowing postmodern painting. They were also frequently associated with the so-called 'Pattern and Decoration Movement' of the 1970s. This movement comprised female artists and a few male artists who had previously been active in the abstract art movements of the 1960s. This movement was a reaction against the Western, male-dominated Modernist and post-war Modernist canon, which had marginalised non-Western and feminine forms of art and craft. Many of the female artists were committed feminists who sought to revive interest in forms, patterns and decorations that had been considered 'inferior' or trivial.

However, Gordy insisted on independence, saying he preferred to work 'outside the mainstream'. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was renowned for his masterful compositions and sophisticated use of space, line and colour. He participated in the Whitney Biennial and other significant exhibitions, and New York's PS1 dedicated a solo exhibition to him. He is best known today for his prints and late monotypes, but worked with a variety of media throughout his career.
This exhibition, the first comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work at the New Orleans Museum of Art in over four decades, features a selection of Gordy’s work from the 1950s until his untimely death from AIDS in 1986.

Robert Gordy, Rimbaud’s Dream #2, 1971
New Orleans Museum of Art

The work of Turkish opera singer and painter Semiha Berksoy (1910–2004) caused a sensation at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin last spring. Berksoy studied at the Berlin Academy of Music in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, becoming famous in 1939 for her role in Richard Strauss's opera Ariadne auf Naxos. She also studied painting. However, it was not until long after she returned to Turkey that she was recognised as a visual artist. In the 1960s, she created works that increasingly focused on dreams, visions and feelings. Berksoy developed an 'expressive', completely idiosyncratic style that broke the boundaries of painting. With 'Aria of All Colors', Istanbul Modern is now presenting the most comprehensive exhibition on Semiha Berksoy in Turkey to date. The exhibition reinterprets the Berlin show, bringing together over 200 of Berksoy's works from the performing and visual arts, cinema, and literature. 'Aria of Colors' documents the unique connections Berksoy made between opera, theatre, painting, and literature. This is certainly one of the art events of the year in Istanbul.

Semiha Berksoy
Feast at the Prison, 1999
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection

Few artists in recent decades have succeeded in capturing our attitude to life in the era of advertising, entertainment and online culture. In this era, we have the power to shape and express our identities, bodies and worlds in ways that were previously unimaginable. However, we are also becoming increasingly formless in the flow of algorithms. With astute wit, Japanese-British artist Simon Fujiwara (born 1982) explores the depths of digital turbo-capitalism, as well as moments of humanity and even joy, in his immersive video works and installations. Now, MUDAM is dedicating A Whole New World to him: an opulent, immersive mid-career retrospective inspired by the scenography and dramaturgy of amusement parks. It brings together Fujiwara's works in the form of his own 'wonder worlds'. These unfold throughout the museum, leading visitors through environments that enchant and unsettle in equal measure. Visitors will encounter Who the Bear (2020–ongoing), Fujiwara's cartoon character and amusement park mascot. 'Who' has no fixed identity — no origin, gender, sexual orientation or nationality — and is constantly searching for an image of their true self. Alongside major works such as Joanne (2016), Fabulous Beasts (2015–2016) and The Mirror Stage (2009–2013), Hope House (2017–2020) is also on display – Fujihara's breathtaking exploration of the story of Anne Frank.

Simon Fujiwara, Likeness, 2018
Ausstellungsansicht, Simon Fujiwara, Hope House,
Blaffer Art Museum in der University of Houston, Texas, 2020-21
Foto: Sean Fleming

No artist has depicted pain with such relentless intimacy as Dame Tracey Emin, perhaps only equalled by Frida Kahlo. She can be seen in the tradition of Munch and Schiele, as well as great poets, outsiders and visionaries. David Bowie, a close friend of hers, said she was like 'William Blake as a woman, written by Mike Leigh'. Emin, who is also represented in the Deutsche Bank Collection, is anything but an outsider, however. She rose to international fame in the 1990s with 'My Bed', her scandalous, Turner Prize-nominated unmade bed littered with cigarette butts and bodily fluids. Not only has Emin conquered the world as a painter, she has also survived an extremely serious bout of cancer against all odds. In the UK, she is something of a national treasure, embodying British culture from the working class to the upper class. Now she is being celebrated with a huge milestone exhibition at the Tate Modern – an event that is simply not to be missed.

Tracey Emin, The End of Love 2024. Tate © Tracey Emin

Born in 1975, Danh Vo fled Vietnam with his family to Denmark at the age of four. For more than two decades, he has been developing a visual language based on uprooting. Now living and working in Mexico City and on his Güldenhof farm north of Berlin with a community of 20 people, the artist is famous for his installation-based 'spatial choreographies', combining his own works with collected objects and pieces by other artists. The eponymous ancient Greek noun πνεῦμα Ἔλισσα, which originally meant 'breath' or 'wind', refers to the active, creative principle that structures the cosmos. In this sense, the exhibition explores human intimacy and the conditions that shape the actions, resilience, and meaning-making of the individual. Fragments of ancient sculptures, religious relics, and monumental found objects are brought together to explore how historical forces affect bodies, materials, and personal narratives.

Installation view: Danh Vo – Tropaeolum, 2023. La Bourse de Commerce, Paris. Photo: Nick Ash

'The Island', Hito Steyerl's site-specific project for the Osservatorio in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, is a complex film installation. It intertwines different narratives, all of which are associated with the motif of flooding. The film addresses urgent issues such as current authoritarian tendencies, the use of AI, the climate crisis and political pressure on science. Shot on the Dalmatian island of Korčula, the 26-minute film is full of animations and forms the centrepiece of the exhibition, which was created especially for Milan. German actor Marc Waschke, a frequent collaborator of Steyerl's, plays a tragicomic superhero who must save the world in a Flash Gordon costume wielding a Star Wars lightsaber. The film covers topics such as archaeology, quantum physics, and fascism. “And all this on a small island in Dalmatia on the Adriatic Sea. All these elements collide in this installation, which I hope will delight children too,” says Steyerl. Different time zones also collide: a medially confused, capitalistically distorted, and technologically disruptive “fake time” and “deep time”—the time of the hidden geological space of experience, an underwater time that lies outside the artificially created spectrum of humans.

The Island” by Hito Steyerl, Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, Milan. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, Courtesy Fondazione Prada

Curated by Nancy Spector, the exhibition ‘Helter Skelter’ places the works of two major American artists, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960) and Richard Prince (b. 1949), in an artistic and conceptual dialogue. Although born a decade apart, they both exhibit a certain ruthlessness in their appropriation and manipulation of images. Their sources range from films and pulp fiction to YouTube videos, science fiction stories, album covers, rock ’n’ roll posters, first editions of Beat literature, newsreels, celebrity memorabilia, and social media posts.

Both artists engage intensely with American pop culture, exposing its abysses and deceptions while simultaneously drawing on many of its myths and perversions. Jafa’s film works and installations reflect his identity as an African American, whilst also aiming to revitalise Black cinema and art. Prince’s works oscillate between critiquing white masculinity and exploring the darker aspects of the American psyche. The exhibition presents over fifty pieces, including photographs, videos, installations, sculptures and paintings. In addition, new works by both artists and a jointly conceived zine are on display.

Arthur Jafa, Mickey Mouse was a Scorpio, 2017 (detail). Private collection © Arthur Jafa / Midnight Robber © Photo: Ian Watts.TV. Richard Prince, Graduation, 2018. Collection of Larry Gagosian © Richard Prince

Rosa Barba’s work transcends the boundaries between film, sculpture and installation, maintaining a fluid relationship between these disciplines. Central themes include transformation, perception and memory. Through her work, she successfully bridges the gap between art and science, exploring landscapes and the so-called ecologies of the future. Her films often start out as documentaries but then transition into the sphere of fiction. Reality becomes narrative material that is constantly reshaping itself. The specific location always takes centre stage, encompassing its traces, stories and political dimensions.

'Drawing Vocabularies' is Rosa Barba’s first major institutional exhibition in Portugal. She is the third artist to be offered a 'carte blanche' to work with pieces from the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian collection in the Nave space. This speculative exploration of stories, repositories and memory highlights the artist’s long-standing interest in the possibilities of archives and places where fact and fiction converge to reveal new narratives and unexplored discourses.

View of the exhibition 'Rosa Barba. Frame Time Open' at MAXXI. Courtesy the artist, Esther Schipper, Vistamare, ©Andrea Rossetti

Until the end of August, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi is presenting one of the most significant exhibitions ever held in Italy dedicated to Mark Rothko, the master of post-war American modernism. Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition has been designed specifically for the Palazzo Strozzi in honour of the artist’s special bond with the city. Organised chronologically, it traces Rothko’s entire career, from his figurative works of the 1930s and 1940s, which were influenced by Expressionism and Surrealism, to his transcendent, spatial colour-field paintings of the 1950s and 1960s. Lenders include the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition brings together over 70 works, many of which have never before been shown in Italy.

Mark Rothko No.3 / No. 13 1949
The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Firenze
©1998 by Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artist
Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

Hurvin Anderson has been painting for over thirty years and is considered a contemporary classic in Britain. Yet it is only now that Tate Britain is dedicating its first retrospective to him. The exhibition features around 80 works spanning the artist’s entire career, from his early pieces to his most recent paintings, some of which have never been exhibited before. Through colourful landscapes and interiors, Anderson’s work connects Britain and the Caribbean.

Anderson’s parents came to Birmingham from Jamaica in 1961 as part of the Windrush generation, where they built a new life for themselves. Even as a schoolchild, he drew and painted almost obsessively. He studied art and, in the 1990s, started painting from photographs – family snaps and images he found in dusty boxes. Anderson’s world is shaped by stark contrasts between Caribbean and British culture, yet he never feels completely at home anywhere. During a working visit to Trinidad, he initially felt alienated. In his masterful, hazy paintings, he frequently transposes Caribbean jungle vegetation into British landscapes. His work reflects experiences of belonging and diaspora, evoking a evoking a sense of, as he puts it, ‘being in one place but thinking about another’.

Hurvin Anderson,Is It OK To Be Black?,2015-16, Arts CouncilCollection, Southbank Centre, London © A 70th Anniversary Commissionfor the Arts Council Collection with New Art Exchange, Nottingham and Thomas Dane Gallery, London. © Hurvin Anderson

With over 300 pieces from the archive and new collections, 'From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce & Gabbana” is a declaration of love for Italian culture, the inspiration behind the creations of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. This is the first time that the fashion house's archive has been presented in such a comprehensive manner, playfully illuminating the creative genius of its founders and the company's DNA. This is not just an exhibition, but a theatrical production with stage design by Agence Galuchat. Having premiered at Milan's Palazzo Reale, the exhibition has been redesigned in dialogue with the expanded ICA Miami location, reflecting the museum's role as a space for contemporary visual culture. As an ode to craftsmanship, it showcases the extraordinary realisation of their ideas. Visitors are guided through a series of immersive rooms that shed light on various aspects of the designers' vision. The presentation draws on art, architecture, folklore, regional topographies, craftsmanship, opera, ballet and the enduring spirit of la dolce vita.

Installation Image | From the Heart to the Hands: Dolce&Gabbana, 2025, Photo Courtesy: Dolce&Gabbana / Mark Blower

Harmony Korine was a legend from the very beginning. At just 19 years old, he wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s 'Kids' (1995), a raw and magnificent film about skateboarding and youth culture in 1990s New York, covering themes such as drugs, sex, AIDS and depression. Korine knew what he was writing about. The underage actors, including Chloë Sevigny, were non-professionals and authentic 'kids' who were cast on the street. The film caused a scandal, partly due to its explicit scenes, as did Korine's directorial debut, Gummo (1997).

He went on to make further films, including Mister Lonely (2007), Spring Breakers (2012) and The Beach Bum (2019). He has also directed music videos for artists including Rihanna, Sonic Youth and Cat Power. 'Perfect Nonsense' is the first major museum exhibition in the US dedicated to Korine's and multifaceted body of work. Tracking his entire career, the exhibition brings together over 50 works, including paintings, photographs, collages, zines and drawings. It situates his work within a broad continuum of visual production that blurs the boundaries between cinema, contemporary art, and pop culture.

Harmony Korine, Shirley’s Temple, 2016.

Craig Robins Collection.

Robert Gordy (1933–1986) was a Louisiana native and a unique phenomenon in American painting, something of a maverick. His graphically elegant and often ornamental paintings draw on Art Deco and Surrealism, while also foreshadowing postmodern painting. They were also frequently associated with the so-called 'Pattern and Decoration Movement' of the 1970s. This movement comprised female artists and a few male artists who had previously been active in the abstract art movements of the 1960s. This movement was a reaction against the Western, male-dominated Modernist and post-war Modernist canon, which had marginalised non-Western and feminine forms of art and craft. Many of the female artists were committed feminists who sought to revive interest in forms, patterns and decorations that had been considered 'inferior' or trivial.

However, Gordy insisted on independence, saying he preferred to work 'outside the mainstream'. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was renowned for his masterful compositions and sophisticated use of space, line and colour. He participated in the Whitney Biennial and other significant exhibitions, and New York's PS1 dedicated a solo exhibition to him. He is best known today for his prints and late monotypes, but worked with a variety of media throughout his career.
This exhibition, the first comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work at the New Orleans Museum of Art in over four decades, features a selection of Gordy’s work from the 1950s until his untimely death from AIDS in 1986.

Robert Gordy, Rimbaud’s Dream #2, 1971
New Orleans Museum of Art

From December, Brisbane will host Presence, a comprehensive exhibition by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. It will feature significant new installations, photographs, and sculptures. The highly anticipated exhibition was developed by Eliasson and his studio specifically for the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Spanning the entire ground floor of the GOMA, it comprises over 20 pieces by the artist from 1993 to the present day. The spectrum ranges from the groundbreaking work 'Beauty' (1993), in which a rainbow appears to float in a veil of fine mist, to the immersive rock landscape and small stream of 'Riverbed' (2014), to a series of never-before-seen works developed specifically for 'Presence'. These include two large new installations dealing with the polarisation of light: 'Your negotiable vulnerability seen from two perspectives' (2025) and 'Your truths' (2025). Chris Saines, director of QAGOMA, says of Eliasson's work, 'It forces us to think about how we relate to the world visually, spatially, and kinetically.'

Key Visual of the Singapore Biennale 2025. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

"Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light" honors the diverse photographic practices of more than eighty female artists who were active between 1900 and 1975. With photographs, postcards, photo books and magazines, the exhibition examines the role of female photographers and shows how they, as artists, created an image of themselves, of others and of their time.

The spectrum ranges from photographs of the women's suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century to some of the most iconic images of the 20th century by Diane Arbus, Dora Maar and Lee Miller, to the US women's rights movement of the 1970s. From Melbourne to Tokyo, Paris to Buenos Aires, the exhibition presents works by pioneering artists such as Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Imogen Cunningham, Germaine Krull, Tina Modotti, Lucia Moholy, Toyoko Tokiwa, Yamazawa Eiko and many others.

Ellen AUERBACH
R. Schottelius in New York (1953); (1992) {printed}
gelatin silver photograph
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© Ellen Auerbach. VG Bild-Kunst/Copyright Agency