NEW IN THE COLLECTION

The museum is always striving to expand its collection of contemporary art. We can expand, complete and further develop the inventory of the house through targeted purchases and donations. Particular emphasis is placed on significant individual works that have the power to convey an idea of the entirety of a direction, an outlook, an intention.

Here you will find a selection of our new acquisitions:

Özlem Altın, Naked eye (landscape), 2023, ink and oil paint on canvas

Özlem Altın
Naked Eye (landscape), 2023
Tusche und Öl auf Leinwand; Diptychon

Hieroglyph (transfer through touch), 2019
Hieroglyph (mechanism), 2019
Tusche auf Inkjet Print

Both the two-panel painting Naked Eye (landscape), 2023, and the two works Hieroglyph (transfer through touch), 2019, and Hieroglyph (mechanism), 2019, are characterised by a pronounced relationality through which the artworks enter into a relationship with one another. Image reproductions emerge from seemingly abstract, painterly surfaces, which Altın connects or puts under tension with sometimes bold, sometimes delicate brushstrokes. The artist thus creates powerful yet poetic images that unite painting and conceptual photography in an unexpected way. Altın's works take their starting point in an associatively compiled archive that includes magazine clippings, newspaper images and photographic reproductions of cultural artefacts.

The works could be acquired through the Tiemann Prize.

Koen van den Broek, Baie des Anges, 2022, oil on canvas

Koen van den Broek
Baie des Anges
2022, Oil on Canvas

House facades, street canyons, vehicles and pavements. Since the early 2000s, Belgian artist Koen van den Broek has made his urban present the subject of his paintings. He moves with ease along the boundaries of abstraction and depiction of reality.
Despite the absence of people in the paintings, their presence can be felt everywhere: bridges, sewers, street lamps and pipes. Koen van den Broek finds his inspiration in photographs he takes while travelling. The template for "Baie des Anges" was a photograph of the bay of the same name on the Côte d'Azur.

Jonas Englert, Circle I (Still), 2019

Jonas Englert
Circles I
2019, Video installation, 7 channels, found footage
Circles II
2019, diagram, screen print, light box

Jonas Englert's video work Circles draws on historical footage from contemporary history that tells of interpersonal encounters. The public figures are eternally linked in circles via interpersonal (skin) contact. The video collage dismantles the choreographed scenes of political encounters against the backdrop of the events of the two world wars (and beyond) and uncovers the political network behind them.

Sven Johne, Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, 2023, Videostill, © Sven Johne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Sven Johne
Das sowjetische Hauptquartier
2023, 4K video, 32:57 min

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.

The art museum has acquired Das sowjetische Hauptquartier in 2024. The film is on display from 8 March until 26 May.

Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua 1978-79, Youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding Monimbo, 1978

Susan Meiselas
Nicaragua, 1978-79
Nicaragua: 10 Years Later Pictures From a Revolution, 1991

The photographs taken by Susan Meiselas in Nicaragua are still considered by some to be Meiselas' signature work. Meiselas' work in Nicaragua is a milestone in war photography due to its groundbreaking and controversial use of colour and remains a model of committed, subjective documentary reporting. Without an assignment of any sort, Meiselas went to Nicaragua in 1978 to cover the popular insurrection following the assassination of the editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. “I am not a war photographer in the sense that I didn’t go there for that purpose,” explained Meiselas. “I’m really interested in how things come about and not just in the surface of what it is.” Over three decades, in times of war and peace, Meiselas returned to the sites where she took the original photographs, using her book Nicaragua: June 1978–July 1979 (first edition, 1981) to find the people she had photographed and record their testimonies, resulting in her third film on Nicaragua, Pictures from a Revolution (1991).

The art museum has acquired five C-prints from the series Nicaragua, 1978-79, including Youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding Monimbo, 1978, as well as five accompanying videos from Pictures From a Revolution, 1991.

Bjørn Melhus, LOLTROLL, 2023

Bjørn Melhus
LOLTROLL

From the fountain on the forecourt of the art museum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen he babbles, quacks and scolds - the LOLTROLL by Bjørn Melhus. Like a hologram, a head hovers in the depths, constantly changing its appearance and emitting snippets of speech: sounds of enthusiasm, but also snippets of speech from social media and absurd terms from insults. LOL (Laughing Out Loud) meets the internet troll, a person whose comments are emotionally provocative in order to deliberately disrupt discussions on the internet.

LOLTROLL is located in the sculpture park in the well at the entrance to the museum and can be heard from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.