The Most Contemporary Picture Show, Actually
René Daniels – Michael Krebber – Klaus Merkel
until 28 Jan. 2007
The exhibition brings three artists together for the first time – René Daniels, Michael Krebber and Klaus Merkel – who have all been investigating the possibilities of painting and the picture as a constitutive medium of the art business since the mid 1980s, although each one of them does so in a completely different way. The works of these three artists not only explore purely painterly issues, but also raise questions concerning the role of the artist, the conception and reception of pictures, and the conditions of art and the exhibition business. Hans-Jürgen Hafner's concept to compare selected earlier and current works by Michael Krebber and Klaus Merkel, as well as a rich selection of pre-1987 paintings, gouache works and drawings by René Daniels, permits a retrospective look at such discourse, simultaneously bringing it up to date.
A documentation of the exhibition has
been published by the Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, and includes contributions by Markus Brüderlin and Hans-Jürgen Hafner.

Ina Weber -
Von Bauhaus zu Real über Lidl und Minimal
22 Feb.-15 April 2007
The wide, varied range of products to be found in DIY stores provides the material for Ina Weber's (born 1964) carefully constructed or cast concrete sculptures. High-rise buildings, supermarkets, a swimming pool and filling station, the furnishings of pedestrian zones or students' digs represent prototypes of a functional everyday culture whose design also tells us, inevitably, something about social conditions. But Weber's sculptures are by no means authentic models of real buildings; instead, already existing structures are combined and reproduced on different scales in an acquisition process demonstrating skilled craftsmanship. It involves a cheerful re-evaluation of profane design and recalls the aesthetic standards of building culture from Modernism to the present day. Ina Weber's sober, yet simultan-eously humorous view of the world is particularly obvious in her large format watercolours, in which she captures the stylistic infractions and architectonic misunderstandings that emerge when functionalism is combined with an absurd decorative desire.
The exhibition will also be shown at the Kunstverein Kassel in 2008; the accompanying catalogue is published by Kerber Verlag and contains texts by Bernhard Balkenhol, Giti Nourbakhsch and Ellen Seifermann.

Romantic Conceptualism
10 May-15 July 2007
This exhibition investigates Concept Art since the 1960s and the Romantic content of its development through four artistic generations up to the present day. Generally, the Concept and Minimal Art of the 60s and 70s – with its demands for autonomy and strict rules aiming for a conceivable objectivisation – is regarded as aloof, clear and rational. Internationally, it developed in connection with the social and political changes of the 1960s and stands for a questioning of the media, institutional and social conditions of art, together with an extended field of activity. But the entire oeuvres of artists such as Bas Jan Ader or Rodney Graham and key works by Robert Barry, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Susan Hiller, Douglas Huebler or Yoko Ono indicate that there is a component of Concept Art which actually appears to represent its very antithesis: the romantic. These artists share an interest in specific attributes of Romanticism, which they express in abstract, subtle and formalised ways; an interest in feelings of alienation, isolation, melancholy or in a longing for affinity with man or nature.
The guest curator of this project, Jörg Heiser, is an author, critic and co-editor of the art magazine Frieze. Additional venues are planned in Vienna and Vilnius, and a comprehensive catalogue will be published parallel to the exhibition.

Blaue Nacht
Samstag, 19. Mai 2007, 19.30 Uhr-2.00 Uhr

Rachel Harrison. Voyage of the Beagle
13 Sept.-4 Nov. 2007
In her fragile sculptures, Rachel Harrison (born 1966) thematises the complexity of perceptive possibilities by interconnecting contrasting elements, forms and narratives. Organic forms painted in bright colours – together with a range of pedestals or room-dividers constructed from wooden boards – become carriers of everyday objects such as children's toys, wigs, photographs, videos, advertising material or newspaper articles. The sculptures by this New York artist are located between abstraction and representation, conveying a wealth of artistic references from Minimalism to the Ready-made. In addition, these sculptural material collages combine absurd comedy, kitsch and formalism with an inscrutable black humour.
For her first large-scale individual exhibition in Germany and Switzerland, organised in cooperation with the Migros Museum Zurich, Rachel Harrison is creating primarily new sculptures and a c. 30-part photo-graphic work.

Peter Zimmermann. wheel
29 Nov. 2007-20 Jan. 2008
The exhibition wheel in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg offers a first opportunity to see Peter Zimmermann's well-known epoxy resin pictures - their abstract, brightly-coloured motifs generated by computer-technological processes - in conjunction with examples from earlier work groups such as the printed "boxes", and his paintings of book covers, including travel guides and Jackson Pollock catalogues. In this way, focus is brought to bear on the conceptual starting point that has characterised his work consistently since the mid 1980s, and the relations between original and copy, surface and content are investigated in a host of new ways. Peter Zimmermann has created new paintings and sculptures especially for this exhibition, as well as designing one floor as a space-related, accessible picture.
The Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg is publishing a catalogue (German/English), with essay contributions by Stefan Berg, Ellen Seifermann and Astrid Wege.

in the project room: Julius Popp bit.fall
On a transparent sculptural curtain made of water drops, which hangs from the ceiling to the floor, new concepts are constantly formed in water only to dissolve once again in the process of falling. The input for the installation by Julius Popp (born in Nuremberg in 1973) is provided by a computer programme; on the basis of statistical rules, this selects topical keywords from various Internet news services and transforms this digital information into analogue data. In Julius Popp's installation, which is located somewhere between art and science, the medium of flowing water corresponds to the permanent stream of information about current world events.