Mathieu Mercier. Untitled 1993-2007
14 Feb.-6 April 2008
The French artist Mathieu Mercier (born 1970) produces works within a conflicting aesthetic sphere of design, Constructivism, Readymade and Pop culture. On the basis of ordinary household objects, lamps, furniture, car bonnets, protective masks or even an aquarium inhabited by a sea cucumber, Mercier investigates the relations between today's everyday, mass-produced objects and their aesthetic origins in art and design since the early 1920s. In the process, the artist practises the methods of displacement, reconstruction and context shift; between functional product and artistic object, between everyday constructions and futuristic high-tech visions.
The first retrospective show of work by Mathieu Mercier in Germany has been organised in cooperation with the Musée d´Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. It will be accompanied by a catalogue publication, and is sponsored by the Bureau des Arts Plastiques/CULTURESFRANCE.

Beate Gütschow. Somewhere else
24 April-15 June 2008
The natural and urban landscapes on the large-format photographs by Beate Gütschow (born 1970) certainly recall familiar images, but no longer permit us concrete orientation. Her landscape panoramas are assembled digitally from many individual images and span a full range from the idyll of Arcadian landscapes to the stony deserts of declining metropolises. Using the means of photography and computer technology, Beate GŸtschow reflects on schemes of composition that were developed in the painting of the 17th and 18th centuries by Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin or Jacob van Ruisdael, for example. These prove themselves artificial constructions to the same extent as Gütschow's fictive, monumental architectures and the vacant lots and fragments of urban civilisation that may once have been the foundation of modern utopias. By contrast to the ideal-typical landscapes of the past, the people in Gütschow's inhospitable world seem estranged and lost.
The exhibition Somewhere Else is being realized in collaboration with the Haus am Waldsee, Berlin and will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue.

Blaue Nacht
31 May 2008, 7 pm-1.30 am
(www.blauenacht.nuernberg.de)

The site
6 July-31 Aug. 2008
Even now, the site used by the National Socialists for their annual Nuremberg Rallies from 1933 to 1938 documents their megalomania and claim to power with its huge dimensions and remaining monumental architecture such as the Gro§e Stra§e or the Zeppelin stand. The documentation centre on the Nuremberg Rally site and a supplementary information system laid out in the grounds inform visitors about the history of the location and the ideological strategies of the Nazi regime. Today, the site is used as a sport and leisure park, where more than 200 cultural and sporting events take place each year, from open-air classic concerts to 'Rock in the Park', from a folk festival before the backdrop of the congress hall to the Norisring Race, to name only the best-known. The exhibition gathers together works by artists including Winfried Baumann, Ross Birrell, Claus Föttinger, Susanne Kriemann, Bernhard Prinz, Jürgen Teller and Artur Zmijewsky, who have investigated the former Rally site in Nuremberg on their own initiative and in very individual ways. The works shown raise questions concerning the relation between the site's historical burden and its present use, the relation of (auto-) biographical aspects to those of collective and national significance, or of forms and means of artistic production that are conceivable when handling this topic.
A catalogue will be published for the exhibition.
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The exhibition is taking place in collaboration with the documentation centre of the Nuremberg Rally site and will be accompanied by the symposium SchattenOrt/Shadow Place (a project of the Schauspiel am Staatstheater Nürnberg and the Institute for Theatre Studies and Media Education Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 4th-6th July) as well as by a project of the GrashalmInstitut with temporary artistic interventions in the grounds (concept: Thomas May)

Kiki Smith. Her Home
18 Sept.-16 Nov. 2008
From the very beginning, the work of Kiki Smith (born 1954 in Nuremberg, now living in New York) has focused on reflections of human existence, of life and death. Her equally traumatic and poetic portrayals of the human body gave her an international name in the late eighties. After the big retrospective show A Gathering 1980-2005, which toured five American museums (2006-07), Kiki Smith will be producing mainly new works for the coming exhibition in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, which is being prepared in cooperation with the museum Haus Esters in Krefeld. Thematically, the current exhibition Her Home spans a womanÕs life from birth to death. Starting from the historical perspective of domestic life, which is deep-rooted in protestant New England, Kiki Smith develops a metaphor-rich spectrum of lifestyles for women beyond marriage. These are expressed using a large number of artistic genres and materials: sculptures made of porcelain, plaster and bronze alternate with large-format drawings, prints, photographs, glass works or wallpapers.
A catalogue will be published parallel to the exhibition.

Cao Fei
11 Dec. 2008-15 Feb. 2009
In her photo series, video films and installations, Cao Fei – who was born in Gouangzhou in 1978 – is concerned primarily with the rapid social and cultural upheavals in China. A key theme in her work is 'Speed Urbanism' with its processes of social and economic change in rural areas, as shown in the film installation Nu River, for example, conceived as a 'road movie'. She presented it in an army tent equipped with science fiction painting and hip-hop elements at the Biennial Lyon in 2007. Cao Fei represents a young generation of Chinese artists who are personally involved in the cultural changes in their country. In her 'docu-dramas' like Cos Players, which could be seen in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg in 2006, she consciously adopts a perspective that mediates between inside view and the standpoint of outsiders, whereby documentation and fiction are interwoven. The projects RMB-City and I Mirror are also being presented; Cao Fei is developing this projects on the Internet – on 'Second Life' – as a utopian city and way of life of the future.
A catalogue will be published in conjunction with these Chinese artist's first major individual exhibition in Germany.