Exhibition

Opération Béton

09.03.2025 -
15.06.2025

Karl-Heinz Adler. Erasmus Schröter. Carsten Nicolai. Marta Dyachenko

The ambivalent building material concrete, which carries within it the creative process as well as the entire spectrum between destruction, reconstruction and environmental catastrophe, has long moved and challenged artists. Opération Béton ("Operation Concrete") is the title of French experimental filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's first film, which was released in 1954. The enormous versatility and usability of the building material made of cement, rock and water allows endless possibilities for its application in architecture and art.

In times of climate crisis, however, the modern building material, whose range of applications seems limitless, is always associated with the man-made disasters of this world. While Karl-Heinz Adler's moulded stone systems stand for the reinterpretation of the material in a time of reconstruction, the ambivalence between decay and preservation becomes the omnipresent theme of a musical and visual intervention in Carsten Nicolai's video ‘Betonschiff ohne Namen’.

For his photographs, Erasmus Schröter staged the bunkers of the ‘Atlantic Wall’, built from millions of tonnes of concrete and commissioned by the German occupation in 1942, in coloured light, creating an ambivalent atmosphere between past megalomania, threat and ridicule. This is intensified in the present in view of modern air-to-ground missiles, portable anti-tank weapons and military conflicts that have become more perfidious. Preservation and destruction, but also the great possibilities of creating something new from the past, have become a theme for the artist Marta Dyachenko and her sculptures made of moulded concrete in recent years. The complex relationship between nature and man and the socially constructed view of what is and will be is reflected in exemplary fashion in the artworks, which are combined with concrete as a building material characterised by opportunities and disasters in equal measure.

Karl-Heinz Adler (1927 Remtengrün/Vogtland - 2018 Dresden) was a painter, graphic artist and conceptual artist and is now considered one of the most outstanding representatives of concrete art in Germany. His paper collages, object layers, drawings and models for the moulded stone systems he had made from concrete can be seen in this exhibition.

Erasmus Schröter (1956 Leipzig - 2021 Leipzig) was a photographer who initially worked in Leipzig, from 1985 in Hamburg and from the mid-1990s back in Leipzig, whose motifs range from surreal-looking everyday GDR imagery to conceptual series full of subtlety and irony.

Carsten Nicolai (*1965 Karl-Marx-Stadt/Chemnitz, lives in Berlin) is a German media artist and musician (pseudonym Alva Noto) who works as a border crosser at the interface between visual art, science and music. His often large-scale audiovisual installations aim to make invisible phenomena such as sound and light frequencies tangible.

Marta Dyachenko (*1990 in Kiev, lives in Berlin) studied architecture, fine arts and sculpture in Berlin. Her installations of model-like sculptures in concrete raise questions about the relationship between nature and man as well as the socially constructed view of the landscape.

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Exhibition

Andrius Arutiunian

Under the Cold Sun

27.03.2025 -
18.05.2025

Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer Andrius Arutiunian presents a new version of his large-scale installation Under the Cold Sun (2024/25). Working with the architecture of the historic monastery church of the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, the work relies on two essential materials—light and sound—to create its hypnotic state.

The installation continues the artist’s interest in Middle Eastern and Caucasian cosmologies, particularly the myth of the Armenian-Zoroastrian demons Hārut and Mārut. These two demons are associated with water, plants, infinity, and renewal across various religious traditions and are widely known for the invention of magic, the distillation of intoxicating substances such as alcohol and perfume, and, most notably, fiction.

In Under the Cold Sun, Arutiunian explores the clashes between historical narratives and contemporary imaginaries. At the center of the piece are three elements—a mirror, a light, and a synthetic organ—three ghostly presences permeating the former monastery’s space. Working with psychoacoustics and light reflections, Under the Cold Sun continues the artist’s exploration of vernacular knowledges, alternate methods of world-ordering, and concepts of musical and political attunement.

Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer Andrius Arutiunian (*1991) represented Armenia at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 with the solo exhibition Gharīb. His works have also been exhibited at major biennials and museums, including the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), M HKA (Antwerp), Sapieha Palace (Vilnius), FACT (Liverpool) and the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius). In 2024 he was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize, and in 2023 he was a DAAD Artist-in-Residence Fellow. Arutiunian's work combines hypnotic sound structures, synthetic sounds and cultural sound languages, creating an experience that is both aesthetically sophisticated and emotionally tangible.

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Exhibition

Hans-Hendrik Grimmling

Painting from 1978 to 2024

15.09.2024 -
09.02.2025

Knotted together, intertwined, clasped - this is how Hans Hendrik Grimmling repeatedly depicts his subject, the human drama of existence, the struggle, the tragedy. It is the people who struggle with each other, who suffer, who despair and who draw hope that interest him. For Grimmling, art is not an accessory, but something universal, something urgently necessary. ‘It is the salvation of life,’ he says.

Austellung Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, im Kmd.
photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Hans-Hendrik Grimmling Austellung im Kmd.
photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Grimmling Werke im Kmd.
photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze

The exhibition explores the foundations of his painting, the origin of the painterly processes that create forms from colours and the power that is expressed in his pictures. Using only a few colours, mainly black, red, yellow and white, Grimmling's work moves between figurative representation and abstraction. The strong rhythm of the forms is constantly reassembled into typical motifs such as the head, hand, bird and knot, visualising the fragile side of humanity. At the same time, his pictures are refuges, moments of fixation.

Starting with some important early works by the painter from the beginning of the 1980s, the exhibition is dedicated to the artist's entire oeuvre in four large chapters. From the extensive work complex of Knots (1990s) and the group of works German Everyday Life (2007) to the paintings of the 2000s, which are strongly characterised by gestures, to the present day, it spans the arc from the early motifs to abstraction and the recurring bird and mask paintings of 2017-2024.

Hans-Hendrik Grimmling (*1947 in Zwenkau near Leipzig) was one of the initiators of the legendary “Erster Leipziger Herbstsalon” in 1984, an exhibition that is considered a milestone in the history of non-conformist GDR art. Grimmling left for West Berlin in 1986 in connection with the repression surrounding the ‘Herbstsalon’. From 2001, he taught there at the Technischen Kunsthochschule Berlin, from 2006 until his retirement in 2017 as professor emeritus.

 

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Exhibition

Nevin Aladağ

The rolling tambourine

10.11.2024 -
09.02.2025

Nevin Aladağ is known for her works in which she playfully and poetically combines sound, installation, video, performance, patterns and ornaments as well as humour. The exhibition ‘The Rolling Tambourine’ at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg shows video and textile works by the artist.

 

Videoinstallation von Aladag im KMd
Exhibition view Nevin Aladağ. The rolling tambourine, 2024, photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Aladag Ausstellung in der Nordgalerie des KMd
Exhibition view Nevin Aladağ. The rolling tambourine, 2024, photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Aladag Ausstellung im KMd
Exhibition view Nevin Aladağ. The rolling tambourine, 2024, photo: Hans-Wulf Kunzeunze
Raise the Roof von Nevin Aladag, 2017, Auststellung im Kmd.
Nevin Aladağ, Raise The Roof (Venice), 2017, Videostill © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024 / Courtesy of the artist and Wentrup, Berlin

In her artistic practice, Nevin Aladağ observes the clash and interaction of cultural elements in material, aesthetic and social terms and translates them into works of art. She poeticises urban space by following its materials and movements or listening to its sounds. In doing so, she opens up a new perspective on everyday objects and social processes. The exhibition invites visitors to experience unexpected connections between music and urbanity, art and society.

In her video installations ‘Jamming’ (2022), ‘Traces’ (2015) and ‘Sessions’ (2013), the artist lets musical instruments such as drums, jingles and tambourines ‘roll’ through various urban landscapes in Berlin, Stuttgart and Sharjah. The musical instruments used in each case explore cross-cultural patterns and commonalities in the locations in different ways.

The series of works ‘Social Fabrics’ (since 2017) also thematises the diverse togetherness. The collages, which are created by fragmenting and reassembling pieces of carpet, examine the mutual influences between different cultures and emphasise what connects them.

Nevin Aladağ, born in 1972 in Van, Turkey, and raised in Stuttgart, studied sculpture with Olaf Metzel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich until 2000. She became known for her contributions to documenta14 and the 57th Venice Biennale. Her works are represented in renowned international collections and are regularly shown in exhibitions and biennials worldwide. Nevin Aladağ now lives in Berlin. She has been a professor for interdisciplinary artistic work at the Dresden University of Fine Arts since 2019.

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Exhibition

Sanja Iveković. Women's House (Sunglasses)

in Magdeburg's public space

19.11.2024 -
01.12.2024

The conceptual poster series Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)] by Sanja Iveković unfolds a powerful intervention in public space. For her works, the artist appropriates glamorous advertising images to overwrite them with urgent feminist messages.

Ivekovic Frauenhaus 2 Litfaßsäulen vor dem KMd
Sanja Iveković, Women's House (Sunglasses), 2024 in Magdeburg, photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Ivekovic Frauenhaus Litfaßsäulen vor dem KMd
Sanja Iveković, Women's House (Sunglasses), 2024 in Magdeburg, photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Frauenhaus (sonnenbrillen) Plakat
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)], 2024 © Sanja Iveković
Frauenhaus (sonnenbrillen) Plakat
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)], 2024 © Sanja Iveković
Frauenhaus (sonnenbrillen) Plakat
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)], 2024 © Sanja Iveković
Frauenhaus (sonnenbrillen) Plakat
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)], 2024 © Sanja Iveković
Frauenhaus (sonnenbrillen) Plakat
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) [Women's House (Sunglasses)], 2024 © Sanja Iveković

She collages black and white motifs of supermodels advertising sunglasses from well-known brands with brightly coloured text fields that show the reality of female experiences of violence in a patriarchal system: Here are the names, biographical data and texts of women who have experienced violence and found refuge in women's shelters. In the texts, they reflect on the confrontation with male violence in their lives. Iveković emphasises the global extent of the abuses and the indispensable role of feminist organisations worldwide: in the red field at the top of the image are the names of international institutions such as the Autonomous Women's House Zagreb or the Mor Çatı Women's Shelter Foundation Istanbul, and now an unspecified women's shelter from Saxony-Anhalt, which offer protection, advice and solidarity to those affected.

The posters have already been published in public spaces, newspapers and magazines in various cities, which emphasises the activist content of this series. The artist locates her works not only in exhibition centres, but also in places of everyday life and the consumer-oriented gaze. In doing so, she questions the function and effect of images in a media society and explores how feminist concerns can be communicated artistically and effectively to the public. Iveković's radical intervention transforms advertising images into an arena of self-empowerment and a public act of dissent against normalised patriarchal violence.

Following the exhibition Outrageously rebellious (14 April - 30 June 2024) at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Sanja Iveković developed five new motifs in collaboration with a women's shelter in Saxony-Anhalt. Women from the region described their encounters with domestic and partner violence in anonymised form, which the artist used to design new posters. The participatory works bear witness to male violence, but also to female coping and resilience. They will be displayed in public spaces in Magdeburg for several weeks in November 2024. The localisation makes it clear that violence against women is a global problem that also affects the lives of local people.

To mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25.11.2024 at 5 pm, the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, together with the Volksbad Buckau c/o Frauenzentrum Courage, invites you to a public tour of the postered artworks. During the tour, actress Iris Albrecht will recite the texts of the women involved, making their voices audible.

The public billposting was realised in cooperation with Ströer Media Deutschland GmbH.

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Exhibition

Leyla Yenirce

Splitter

17.10.2024 -
12.01.2025

Leyla Yenirce’s SPLITTER (2023) transforms the historic architecture of the Magdeburg monastery church, part of a Romanesque monastery complex that today houses the Museum of Contemporary Art, into a space of tension between visibility and concealment, image and sound.

Ausstellungsansicht Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, in der Klosterkirche des Kunstmuseums Magdeburg KMd, 2024, Foto: Stefan Stark
Installation view Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg / Klosterkirche 2024, photo: Stefan Stark
Ausstellungsansicht Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, in der Klosterkirche des Kunstmuseums Magdeburg KMd, 2024, Foto: Stefan Stark
Installation view Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg / Klosterkirche 2024, photo: Stefan Stark
Ausstellungsansicht Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, in der Klosterkirche des Kunstmuseums Magdeburg KMd, 2024, Foto: Stefan Stark
Installation view Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg / Klosterkirche 2024, photo: Stefan Stark
Ausstellungsansicht Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, in der Klosterkirche des Kunstmuseums Magdeburg KMd, 2024, Foto: Stefan Stark
Installation view Leyla Yenirce. Splitter, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg / Klosterkirche 2024, photo: Stefan Stark

Through a large-scale video and immersive soundscape, Yenirce stages a portrait that challenges conventional representation. A young woman is shown, holding a reflective object. By moving it, she controls her own visibility—alternately shielding herself from the gaze of the viewer and becoming enveloped by a blinding golden light.

While SPLITTER ostensibly offers a portrait, it radically subverts the genre. The subject is not passive but actively determines her relationship to the camera, negotiating between exposure and protection. Yenirce’s approach emphasises autonomy, granting the protagonist agency over her own visibility. The work becomes a site of power dynamics, where the boundaries between revelation and concealment, presence and disappearance are constantly in motion.

This interplay resonates deeply with Leyla Yenirce’s exploration of Kurdish identity, informed by her personal history and the ongoing conflict in Kurdistan. Born in Kurdistan and raised in Germany, Yenirce’s work often addresses themes of survival, resistance, and the politics of visibility. SPLITTER reflects on the legacy of female Kurdish fighters, whose battles for freedom and existence continue against the backdrop of technological warfare. Drones and surveillance technologies have transformed the terrain of resistance, making once protective mountains visible and vulnerable. Yet Yenirce’s work also gestures towards new forms of defiance: the blinding light that shields the woman from view becomes a metaphor for the ongoing struggle for autonomy in the face of asymmetrical power.

By situating SPLITTER within the former monastery church, Yenirce invites viewers to contemplate the architectural echoes of hierarchy and exclusion. Once a place of spiritual authority, the church’s space is now reoriented to emphasize the real world and the marginalized. Yenirce displaces the spiritual order embodied by the building’s architecture, turning instead towards the lived experiences of those fighting for recognition and survival.

Leyla Yenirce, born in 1992 in Qubînê, lives and works in Berlin. The artist and musician works with painting, sculpture, video and performance to create multi-layered works that negotiate themes such as feminism, war, pop culture, genocide, desire, longing and irony. Yenirce studied fine arts with Jutta Koether at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg until 2022. She has been awarded numerous prizes and scholarships, including the prestigious Ars Viva Prize in 2023. The Kunsthaus Hamburg dedicated her first solo exhibition to her in 2022. Her works have also been shown in numerous renowned institutions such as the Museum Folkwang, Essen (2024), the Haus der Kunst, Munich (2023), the gfzk, Leipzig (2023) and the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2021).

‘Leyla Yenirce. Splitter’ marks the start of a programmatic series at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, which presents music and sound installations in the former monastery church.

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Exhibition

Sergiy Bratkov

My Brother's Cats

09.06.2024 -
06.10.2024

Sergiy Bratkov (born 1960) is known for his radically disturbing and shrill photographs, which, behind the beautiful, colourful surface, provide an unsparing report on the state of society.

Austellung von Sergiy Bratkov im Kmd.
Exhibition view "Sergiy Bratkov. My Brother's Cats", photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Austellung, Sergiy Bratkov im Kmd.
Exhibition view "Sergiy Bratkov. My Brother's Cats", photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze
Videoinstallationvon Sergiy Bratkov im Kmd.
Exhibition view "Sergiy Bratkov. My Brother's Cats", photo: Hans-Wulf Kunze

Like other members of the "Kharkiv School of Photography", he has focussed on social photography for the past 30 years. In spring 2022, the Ukrainian, who has lived in Moscow since 2004, emigrated to Berlin. His reflections, which in his last series were primarily focussed on the outdated clichés of the Soviet era and the new habitus of power-grabbing Eastern capitalism in Ukraine, have now been brutally swept aside by current reality.

In the exhibition, Sergiy Bratkov is showing for the first time new image cycles and videos that were created from the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The ironically observant photographer has become an enquiring analyst whose new series seek to process the horrors of war in his former homeland without sinking into hopelessness.

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Exhibition

Sven Johne

Das sowjetische Hauptquartier

08.03.2024 -
26.05.2024

Das sowjetische Hauptquartier (The Soviet Headquarters), 2023, takes place on the now vacant site of the former officers' house in Wünsdorf, Brandenburg. The palatial estate, build in the early twentieth century in a neo-baroque style, served as the cultural headquarters of the Soviet troops stationed in East Germany until 1994.

This headquarters is the scene of a conversation between the doomed real estate agent Becker and the supposed interested buyer Katharina Baronn.
As the film progresses, the film’s focus shifts and Baronn's inner monologue comes to the fore: As an 8-year-old child, she experienced the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Since then, a sentimental Soviet Union has haunted their memories as a supposed alternative to real capitalism. In

In Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, childish, idealized memories of the East collide with the horrors of real-world capitalism.

Das sowjetische_Hauptquartier von Sven Johne, 2023, im Kmd.
Sven Johne, Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, 2023, Videostill, © Sven Johne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Film
Sven Johne, Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, 2023, Videostill, © Sven Johne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Austellung von Johne im Kmd.
Sven Johne, Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, 2023, Videostill, © Sven Johne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
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Exhibition

Kaltes Tal

Florian Fischer & Johannes Krell

01.06.2024 -
28.07.2024

We are surrounded by it everywhere: nature. The filmmakers Florian Fischer (* 1981) and Johannes Krell (* 1982) illustrate the different facets nature can take on in their video.

In Kaltes Tal (Cold Valley, 2016), the filmmakers explore a paradox: man-made damage to nature can only be repaired by further destroying nature. This becomes visible in an open-cast lime mine. The salvaged material is processed and returned to nature through forest liming in order to counteract the soil pollution caused by acid rain. A cycle like a Möbius loop - due to the irreversible consequences of raw material extraction in order to restore the fragile balance of nature.

Kaltes Tall von Fischer Krell im Kmd.
Florian Fischer & Johannes Krell, Kaltes Tal, 2016
Ausstellung Kaltes Tall von Fischer Krell im Kmd.
Florian Fischer & Johannes Krell, Kaltes Tal, 2016
Fischer Krell im Kmd.
Florian Fischer & Johannes Krell, Kaltes Tal, 2016

Exhibition

outrageously rebellious

Sanja Iveković Ulrike Rosenbach Gabriele Stötzer

14.04.2024 -
30.06.2024

Sanja Iveković (born 1949 in Zagreb), Ulrike Rosenbach (born 1943 in Bad Salzdetfurth) and Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben) have taken radical artistic positions since the 1970s. Independently of each other, in the very different political contexts of their countries of origin, they developed a visual language that criticized common gender roles and the associated cultural norms.

Ivekovic Ausstellung im Kmd.
Sanja Iveković, Ženska kuća (Sunčane naočale) / Frauenhaus (Sonnenbrillen), 2002–2004
Venus vom Rosenbach im Kmd.
Ulrike Rosenbach, Reflexionen über die Geburt der Venus, 1976/1978
Fleischsäule im Kmd.
Gabriele Stötzer, Fleischsäule Europa, 1991

The focus of their work is always the woman: for Rosenbach and Stötzer, the female body functions as a means of expression. They use it as a canvas or to break out of their boundaries through movement. Through her works, Iveković condemns the objectification of women's bodies and the associated projection surface for gender attributions.

The artists use a wide variety of media such as performance, photography, textiles, writing, painting and film to denounce gender assignments and counteract common images with their owns: sometimes loudly in large-scale actions, sometimes quietly in intimate moments, but always with a clear message.

Based on their own biographies, they create works in which they address the relationship between history and the present against the background of their female identity. To do this, they sometimes resort to rigorous artistic methods and demonstrate new possibilities of expression that have become groundbreaking for many areas of contemporary political art.

The exhibition presents photographs, video works, performances and installations from the beginning of the work of Ulrike Rosenbach, Gabriele Stötzer and Sanja Iveković as well as more recent works.

Sanja Iveković (born 1949 in Zagreb) combines artistic practice with social activism. She is considered one of Croatia's first feminist artists. In her early works, which emerged in the context of the Yugoslavian “New Art Practice” movement, she examined the relationship between mass media and ideology. Later projects explore the transformation of the Balkan countries from socialist to nationalist political systems. Iveković's works criticize the position of women in society and the portrayal of women in the media. She notes the relapse into a patriarchal system and deals with violence against women - a topic that has become increasingly visible in recent years.
Iveković often uses dazzling advertising images that show models and juxtaposes them with a social reality in the form of text, such as women affected by domestic violence.

Ulrike Rosenbach (born 1943 in Salzdetfurth near Hildesheim) is considered a pioneer of video art. She studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Joseph Beuys and discovered the then new medium of video early on. In her processual and cross-media way of working, videos are created from performances and videos are turned into installations. This way, the artist creates entire work cycles.
In 1969, Rosenbach came into contact with American feminism and became part of this movement himself. Her themes are female identity and the role as a female artist, wife and mother. Ulrike Rosenbach's work puts her finger in the wound of patriarchal role clichés and counteracts them with other images of femininity.

Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben near Gotha) addresses the (female) individual in her works, which she places in opposition to a totalitarian society. After a year in prison for “state defamation” in the Hoheneck women’s prison in de GDR, she turned from writing to photography and film.
Among other things, she created numerous photographs, all of which are based on the naked female body, which she explores in performances and productions with other (non-)artists. With her work she rebels against the socialist, petty bourgeois and dogmatic taboos of her time. Only in art does she find the freedom for her commitment against incapacitation and regulation.
In the early 1980s, Gabriele Stötzer was a co-founder of an Erfurt group of artists and, in 1989, the citizens' initiative “Women for Change”. In the same year, she was a co-initiator of the occupation of the Stasi district administration in Erfurt.

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