FORT: FANTASY ISLAND
February 8–May 25, 2025
The collective of female artists entitled FORT (Alberta Niemann, b. 1982 in Bremen, and Jenny Kropp, b. 1978 in Frankfurt/Main; both live in Berlin) connects art and life in a special way. In a pointed perspective involving various techniques, they summon up stories of impressive intensity. Their works oscillate between humorous lightness and poetical profundity. Through subtle distortions, familiar scenes and objects from everyday life take on a surreal, sometimes uncanny character.
Wardrobes from whose insides children’s songs can be heard. Heart-shaped balloons that glide through the exhibition. An orphaned drugstore with empty shelves—FANTASY ISLAND is not a hideaway but instead transforms the commonplace into grotesque counter-images. The exhibition presents a wide-ranging selection from the artistic production by the internationally renowned collective of female artists: from large-format sculptures, walk-in installations and acoustic works all the way to enigmatic objects and paintings. All the works exude an atmosphere of melancholy, a feeling of loss and loneliness that can be shared by many persons today.
Julika Rudelius: The Emperor’s New Mall
May 10, 2025–January 4, 2026
In her films, photographs and performances, Julika Rudelius (b. 1968 in Cologne, lives in Amsterdam) is moved by curiosity to investigate people, stereotypes and milieus that she does not (yet) know and that in most cases are quite different from what she would have thought before. The desire to plunge into these realities and to seek out their contradictions, aesthetics and functional modes marks her artistic output on both the contentual and formal levels. Her point of departure is a fascination and amazement with regard to that which we human beings conceive in order to insert ourselves into socially, politically or culturally formed roles and clichés.
The Emperor’s New Mall in the Weserburg concentrates on perfected surfaces—on our outer appearance, our demeanor, our status symbols and the seductive attraction which they exercise on both the protagonists in the works and the viewers in front of them. How much of this is chosen by us ourselves so as to be actually individual? How much is prescribed by social norms, capitalist values and unconscious influences? What is gesture, what is attitude? And wherein lies their fascination?
Master-class Students from the University of the Arts, Bremen
June 28–August 10, 2025
The exhibition featuring master-class students from the Hochschule der Künste Bremen offers multifaceted insights into the quality and variety of current artistic production in the Hanseatic city. The exhibition covers more than 800 square metres on the third floor of the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst and presents new works. There is an extensive variety of themes finding expression in highly diverse media.
One special highlight is the awarding of the Karin Hollweg Prize that is linked to the exhibition. Endowed with a total of 18,000 euros, it numbers among the most important art awards at German art academies. Half of the prize money is reserved for an institutional solo exhibition dedicated to the award winner and taking place in Bremen.
Cold as Ice. Coldness in Art and Society
September 20, 2025–March 8, 2026
The exhibition focuses on the existential dimension of coldness. What are the effects on body and psyche, on politics and social cohesion, when the temperature drops around us? Warmth is a fundamental human need, the prerequisite for feeling well and being healthy. Its absence has grave consequences: the lack of social harmony, increasing alienation, indifference or loneliness. But what does it mean when the social climate cools down? How can we react to politically frosty times?
The exhibition in Bremen brings together works by international artists who offer insights into the different aspects of inner and outer coldness. On display are space-encompassing installations, video works, sculptures and photographs along with performances and participatory formats. Physical cold, emotional frigidity, social and political chillness—these often stand in reciprocal relation, determining and strengthening each other. Cold as Ice reveals these interconnections and assigns them vividly expressive images, even if sometimes their shocking impact is to chill us to the marrow.
Die Tödliche Doris
Exhibition at the Centre for Artists’ Publications
November 22, 2025–October 4, 2026
The exhibition presents the multimedia oeuvre of the artists’ collective Die Tödliche Doris. It is the first comprehensive survey show dedicated to the group, which was active from 1980–1987. Die Tödliche Doris arose to equal degree in the surroundings of the punk movement and amid the art academy in West Berlin. Structured as an artists’ collective, it worked conceptually with various media in the areas of music, performance, video, painting, object art and literature. In particular, it repeatedly put to question our habits of seeing and hearing.
When the collective broke up in 1987, Die Tödliche Doris was internationally recognized. Exhibitions, film screenings and concerts led to numerous cities within Germany and to New York, Amsterdam, Brussels, Basel, Helsinki, Budapest, Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Bordeaux and Tokyo.
The exhibition is taking place in close collaboration with the archive of Die Tödliche Doris, which has been located since 2020 in the spaces of the Galerie K Strich in Bremen.
Director: Janneke de Vries
Press contact: Jan Harriefeld, presse@weserburg.de / T + 49 (0) 421 5983921
