Winter/spring program 2020

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its program for winter/spring 2020. With artistic positions by Hassan Sharif, Kris Lemsalu Malone & Kyp Malone Lemsalu, Jasmina Metwaly and Yazan Khalili as well as the collaboration with Archivio Conz and Kunsthalle for Music, this season continues examining the “body” as a composition—structurally, politically, emotionally, and musically—to scrutinize our understanding of (dis-)placement. 

Pause:
Broken Sounds / Remote Music—Prepared Pianos from the Archivio Conz Collection
January 16–19, 2020
Curators: Gigiotto Del Vecchio, Stefania Palumbo

In collaboration with KW, Archivio Conz presents a five-day event with more than 20 prepared pianos by artists such as Ay-O, Dorothy Iannone, Nam June Paik, Ben Patterson, and Carolee Schneemann from Francesco Conz’s (1935–2010) collection to create a poetical environment, a possible architecture in which a number of performances by Nina Kurtela, Charlemagne Palestine, Phillip Sollmann & Konrad Sprenger, Sky Walking, Angharad Williams, and others take place. More

Hassan Sharif
I Am The Single Work Artist
February 29–May 3, 2020
Curators: Hoor Al Qasimi, Krist Gruijthuijsen

In collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation and Malmö Konsthall, KW presents the first major retrospective of the Emirati artist Hassan Sharif (1951–2016) in Europe. Sharif was one of the most influential artists from the Middle East of the twentieth century. He is considered a leading pioneer of Conceptual Art and new experimental artistic approaches that reconceived a conventional understanding of time, space, form, and social interactions, and which continue to resonate significantly with the younger generation to this day. Throughout his lifetime, Sharif created a complex, critical, and multifaceted body of work, including drawings, paintings, assemblages, sculptural installations, and performances. Detached from local art production, he articulated an artistic language that followed its own logic and artistic impetus, and was also process-based and not elitist. His works are characterized by the use of everyday materials on the one hand and by a kind of artistic reflection that feeds on an analytical view of the immediate environment and philosophical questions on the other. The retrospective is the culmination of Sharif’s long history with the Emirate of Sharjah. More

Kris Lemsalu Malone & Kyp Malone Lemsalu
Love Song Sing-Along
February 29–May 3, 2020
Curator: Cathrin Mayer

KW presents the first institutional exhibition of Estonian artist Kris Lemsalu (born in 1985, Estonia) in Germany. Kris Lemsalu creates sculptures, installations, and performances that fuse the animal kingdom with humankind, nature with the artificial, beauty with repulsion, lightness with gravity, and life with death. She combines animal bodies and porcelain objects with found material such as furs, leather, seashells, wool, or paper in theatrical installations that whisk us off into a world of fantastic imagination. Endeavoring to erase any distance between herself and her objects, the artist also uses her installations as stages for performance pieces in which her sculptures become an integral part of her attire. Her works carry the memory of local mythologies onto the surfaces of objects that resemble artifacts and byproducts of contemporary civilization. For her newly conceived large-scale installation at KW, Lemsalu collaborates with artist and multi-instrumentalist Kyp Malone (born in 1973, US), who complements the installation with music and sound, so that it will serve as an environment for several performances in which the lines between objects, bodies, and action are blurred in order to create an enlivened spatial continuum. More

Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions:
Jasmina Metwaly & Yazan Khalili
March 14–April 19, 2020
Curator: Tirdad Zolghadr

As part of the first edition of the Consortium Commissions, KW and Mophradat present two solo exhibitions of the artists Jasmina Metwaly (born in 1982, Poland) and Yazan Khalili (born in 1981, Syria), each of whom will present a new moving image work. Metwaly's three-channel video installation with textile components addresses the semantics of military uniforms in the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and Khalili's video installation is based on his long-standing engagement with digital archiving in times of political unrest. A pioneering model for co-commissioning ambitious new work, the Consortium Commissions exemplify Mophradat’s inventive approach to supporting artists throughout the Arab world. More

Pause:
Kunsthalle for Music
April 30–May 3, 2020
Curator: Krist Gruijthuijsen

Initiated by Ari Benjamin Meyers (born in 1972, US), Kunsthalle for Music is an itinerant institution dedicated to the presentation of music within the histories and environments of the visual arts. For KW, Kunsthalle for Music transforms the exhibition galleries into a contemporary space for live performances of musical works, eluding the barriers between rehearsal, performance, performers, and audience. An especially formed ensemble enacts an on-site exhibition of musical works, a selection from the Kunsthalle for Music repertoire or “collection” that includes a new Berlin commission and previous commissions as well as existing solos, duets, and group pieces contributed by different composers and visual artists. The exhibition’s meta-score is open to variations and offers a unique interpretation and experience every day. More

Click here for full program 2020.

Press contact
Karoline Köber
T +49 30 243459 41 / press@kw-berlin.de

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

KW’s winter/spring program 2020 is funded by and/or in collaboration with: