English

17.7. TO 24.11.24

The Sprengel Museum Hannover is showing a comprehensive cross-section of the artistic portfolio of Czech artist Zbyněk Sekal (1923-1998). His material paintings, objects and drawings internalise the urge to question one's own existence in a constantly changing world: participation and sympathy alternate with excessive demands and scepticism, whereby Sekal's works enable an unclouded human view of the world. The exhibition is being organised in cooperation with Museum Kampa (Prague) and Museum Liaunig (Neuhaus/Suha)

Curator: Alexander Leinemann

Press conference: 16.7.24, 11.00 am

Official opening: 16.7.24, 6.30 pm

17.7. TO 20.10.24

Martina Kresta (born 1976, lives and works in Vienna) makes time visible. Following strictly defined rules, she draws the finest circular paths freehand with an ink pen, which run from the outside to the inside. The very closely spaced lines can almost only be seen with a magnifying glass.

MATCH CUT, 11.–17.7.2007

For her work „Match Cut“, Kresta worked between July 11 and 17, 2007, i.e. seven days or 168 hours, of which she drew 84 hours. She divides the drawing time between twelve circle drawings (nine in the drawers, two of which are sheets with two circles each; additionally one drawing without a drawer). She notes the time she spends on each drawing on her works. The size of her delicate creations thus indicates the amount of time spent on each: the larger the circle, the longer the time invested. The title „Match Cut“ alludes to the „missing“ 84 hours, which are not visible in the works, that she did not spend on drawing.

Kresta‘s circular drawings are joined together like match cuts and skip over the missing 84 hours in which she did not draw. Match cuts are a film montage technique in which sequences from different scenarios are linked together. This creates a narrative flow that joins together what are actually unrelated elements, like a collage. Part of the work „Match Cut“ is also a graphics cabinet, which originally served to store and preserve works on paper. By storing them in drawers, however, the drawings are deprived of their visibility. Kresta reverses the function of the cabinet: here it serves as a frame, unprotected from light, which decomposes the work in the long term. Small strips of paper on which she wipes off excess ink bear witness to the process of drawing.

BEYOND THE V-CUTOUT
RECORDING 23 JANUARY–19 MARCH 2023 4H/DAY

The work „Beyond the V-cut. Recording January 23– March 19, 2023 4h/day“ also names the time used for recording. However, it is not visible here – the large-format white sheet is seemingly empty, just as time is generally not visible. The artist has used agent ink for her drawing, which is only visible under UV light.

BLOOMING

„Blooming“in turn shows drawn circles on plant leaves. The drawings capture the time that has elapsed while drawing, while the plant leaves wither and thus gives an impression of the process of elapsing time.

Press conference: 16.7.24, 11.00 am

Official opening: 16.7.24, 6.30 pm

21.8. TO 17.11.2024

With works by Ann Collier, Dörte Eißfeldt, Seiichi Furuya, Christina Glanz, Rodney Graham, Annette Kelm, Andrzej Steinbach, Raphaela Vogel and Ian Wiblin.

The exhibition title "The picture is what it does" is inspired by the poet Elke Erb. "The poem is what it does." she says. The question is the same, the medium is different: What do pictures "do"? What do they move and why? And how?

The exhibition presents works by nine artists, mostly from the collection of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, who could not be more different. Each of these positions challenges our perception in a different way. The title of the exhibition invites visitors to consciously engage with it, to observe their own perception and to recognise themselves as part of the artwork..

Curated by Inka Schube.

Press conference: 20.8.24, 11.00 am

Official opening: 20.8.24, 6.30 pm

14.9. TO 24.11.2024

Every year, the Stiftung Niedersachsen honours a personality from the art scene of Lower Saxony with an edition of the "Kunst der Gegenwart" book series. The books are a recognition and honour for the artists, most of whom can look back on a remarkable career and an extensive body of work. Each artist is given the opportunity to design the monograph according to their own wishes. The respective new publications will be accompanied by an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. In 2024 Thomas Rentmeister, born in 1964, selected for the established monograph series.

d23 stands for Dorfstraße 23 in Klein-Reken, the address of Thomas Rentmeisters parental home. Rentmeister took his mother's move to a residential care home and the associated dissolution of the household as an opportunity to reflect on his own history. In his exhibition at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, he transforms all mobile objects that were still in the house such as household goods, furniture and many personal items into an extensive spatial installation.

The exhibition is sponsored by and organised in cooperation with the Stiftung Niedersachsen.

Press conference: 13.9.24, 11.00 am

Official opening: 13.8.24, 7 pm

28.9. TO 5.1.2024

This year, the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung's KURT SCHWITTERS PREIS will be awarded to an artist from Scandinavia for the first time. 

Sámi architect and artist Joar Nango was born in Alta in 1979 and lives in Tromsø, Norway. Nango was trained at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and Weissensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin. He became known as an artist to a larger international audience by taking part in documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece, with a mobile cinema, workshop and meeting place all accommodated in his Mercedes Sprinter (European Everything, 2017). For the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023, he presented the project Girjegumpi together with a whole network of craftspeople, artists and academics who highlighted, picked up and discussed the historical and contemporary culture of the Sámi people.

Nango’s approach is to incorporate the traditional and nomadic cultural techniques of the indigenous Sámi population without any nostalgia or fake romanticism. On the contrary, he researches, updates and communicates these techniques as opportunities to showcase a future-oriented culture in an era of sustainability debates and polarised communities. For instance, he does so via his mobile architecural library Girjegumpi, 2018, which provides literature on the history, geography and culture of the Sámi, or by learning craftsmanship methods to work with fish skins or birch bark. The collaboration of lots of craftspeople, friends and relatives spawns improvised multimedia installations as a result.

At the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Nango and his team will create a new installation in the space known as the Obere Sammlung, using methods and materials drawn from boatbuilding, metaltinkering technology, arts and crafts as well as film. The experimental approach without any preconceived conclusions allows him to respond to the location concerned. The installation was preceded by local research, cycling tours, a viewing of Sámi objects in Hanover’s Landesmuseum and liaison with Göttingen University’s Scandinavian Institute.

THE KURT SCHWITTERS PRIZE

The purpose of the KURT SCHWITTERS PRIZE is to pay tribute to artists “whose work is characterised by its reference to Kurt Schwitters and excels because it ventures into new areas of artistic design and ideas, or whose work helps to connect and integrate artistic genres.”

Joar Nango describes his bond with Kurt Schwitters as follows: “I’m very honoured to receive this prize. It means a lot to me that it’s being awarded in memory of Kurt Schwitters, an artist who was very important at an early stage in my life. Since my student days, his way of combining worlds and disciplines, reality and absurdity has been a leitmotif.

In my very first year at art college, I created a performance based on his famous Ursonate from 1932. As a teenager, I spent one summer working at the museum in my hometown of Molde, where Schwitters’ little stone hut is located outside. Back then, one of my jobs each day was to talk about the time Kurt Schwitters spent on the island during the second world war. That was long before I became an artist myself.”

Born in Hanover, Germany, Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948) visited Norway regularly from 1929. He spent summers with his family on the island of Hjertøya off Molde, on the west coast. Schwitters emigrated to Norway in 1937 and created his second Merzbau on Hjertøya. 

Curated by Carina Plath

Press conference: 27.9.24, 11.00 am

Official opening: 27.9.24, 7 pm (to registrate click here)

Welcome address: Reinhard Spieler, Director Sprengel Museum Hannover

Greeting: Else Kveinen, Counsellor, Kgl. Norwegische Botschaft, Berlin

Laudation: Tone Hansen, Director, Munchmuseet, Oslo, also member of the jury

Introduction: Carina Plath, Curator for painting and sculpture, Sprengel Museum Hannover

Award ceremony: Johannes Janssen, Director of the foundation, Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung

Afterwards: reception

28.9. TO 5.1.2024

The Swiss architect and artist Elsa Burckhardt-Blum (1900-1974) studied art history and architecture. From 1949 onwards, she increasingly worked as a freelance artist and was honoured with a solo exhibition at the Helmhaus in Zurich in 1965. She initially created surrealist-inspired works. Her drawings, paintings, watercolours and linocuts became increasingly abstract and constructive-geometric from the mid-1950s onwards. The collector Ernst J. Kirchertz is one of Burckhardt-Blum's rediscoverers and organised an exhibition of her drawings in Bad Münder in 2022, from which 34 drawings were donated to the Graphic Art Collection of the Sprengel Museum Hannover.

Curated by Karin Orchard

THE ADVENTURE OF ABSTRACTION
FROM 23.4.23

Reconstruction of Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Photo: Herling/Herling/Werner, Sprengel Museum Hannover

In “The Adventure of Abstraction”, the Sprengel Museum Hannover is showing a significant part of its collection in the museum’s newly fitted rooms. The selection provides an overview of major manifestations of and developments in non-representational art from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The starting point and focus of the tour are the reconstructions of El Lissitzky’s “Cabinet of the Abstract” (1927) and Kurt Schwitters’ “Merz Construction” (1933). Both rooms, which previously existed in Hannover, embody influential stages in abstract art and allow the visitor to directly experience the interplay of colour and form.

In addition to outstanding works by Schwitters and Lissitzky, Classical Modernism is represented by works by Piet Mondrian, Hans Arp and Paul Klee, among others. From the post-war period are works by, among others, Willi Baumeister, Pierre Soulages and K.O. Götz. These lead on to contemporary artists, such as Pia Fries, Pippilotti Rist and Wolfgang Tillmans. Awaiting discovery in the 18 rooms of “The Adventure of Abstraction” are a cabinet of graphic works, expansive media artworks and abstract films from the early days of the medium.

ARTISTS IN HANNOVER UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM

On the museum’s mezzanine floor, another area opens up that takes a look at Hannover artists and art from 1933 to 1945. Taking nine people as examples and tracing historical events, the exhibition illuminates the situation of art and artists under National Socialism and asks how the political conditions impacted on the institutions and artists’ lives and work, museum staff and collectors. Finally, we investigate the extent to which the Nazi past continues to affect the museum to this day.

Curator of “The Adventure of Abstraction”: Isabel Schulz

Curatorial assistant for “The Adventure of Abstraction”: Julius Osman

ELEMENTARY PARTS. BASIC PARTS OF THE SPRENGEL MUSEUM HANNOVER AND ITS ART
13.4.19 TO FEBRUARY 2025

The exhibition ELEMENTARY PARTS poses simple and obvious questions about art that nevertheless prove to be absolutely fundamental: What is art? What are works of art actually made of, which materials are used? Which formal languages do they employ? Which reality (or realities) do they refer to between the figurative, the abstract and the virtual? What is art about, what kind of narratives does it tell, and how does it reflect history? In nine themed rooms, the exhibition unfolds an impressive spectrum of the fundamental possibilities of the material, formal and expressive languages of art and its levels of meaning.

The main topics are colour, material, form/shape, realities, history/narratives, natural and human shaped spaces, strong emotions and finally faces, which ultimately reflect our image of human kind. The exhibition brings together a total of more than 150 works from painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic art and film/video (installation) – all part of the Sprengel Museum Hannover’s collection or on permanent loan. They cover a period stretching from the dawn of Modern Art at the beginning of the 20th century to the immediate present. The selection ranges from Max Beckmann, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and Paul Klee via Louise Bourgeois, Sean Scully, Timm Ulrichs, Niki de Saint Phalle and Gerhard Richter to Marlene Dumas, Andrea Fraser, Bruce Nauman, Julian Charrière, Julius von Bismarck, Christoph Girardet and Julia Schmid.

At the beginning of the exhibition, a further room is dedicated to the Sprengel Museum Hannover itself, thematising the basic elements that make up the institution: What is the legal basis for relations between the museum and its sponsors, donors, (permanent) lenders and partners? What collections does it consist of? What departments are there and what are they each responsible for?

With ELEMENTARY PARTS, the Sprengel Museum Hannover is celebrating both the 50th anniversary of the donation of Bernhard and Margrit Sprengel and the 40th year of the museum’s existence.