Cyprien Gaillard: Wassermusik

Water permeates the new body of works in this solo presentation by Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980, Paris). This essential yet often unseen force binds our reality: coursing through the air we breathe, shaping the contours of landscape, and wearing the fabric of our cities.

In Wassermusik, Gaillard attunes to water as an elemental force—passing through time and linking traces in collapsed histories. Through architectural interventions, film, sculpture, and archival materials, he modifies the Südgalerie with remnants such as 1930s exit signage, more recent furniture, a well-trodden basement carpet, revealing the strata of tenants who once inhabited the building. Among the most enduring non-human witnesses are the ammonite fossils on the marble floors, glimmering with splashes of water.

At the centre of the exhibition is Gaillard’s latest stereoscopic motion pictures Retinal Rivalry (2024), partially filmed in Munich and co-produced by Haus der Kunst. By harnessing cutting-edge technology to its full potential, Gaillard offers an expanded, sharpened and deeply affecting vision of the world around us. Seminal within his oeuvre, this landmark work redefines moving image as sculpture. In its sculptural and psychedelic space, the work disrupts conventional perception, dissolving narrative to reveal pure vision.

Works purposefully created by the artist from two archives frame the exhibition: Haus der Kunst in Munich and Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, both sites bearing scars from the Second World War. A selection of furniture (circa 1937–present day) from Haus der Kunst rests heavily in the room, recalling the negotiations of its past tenants over the building’s repurposing. Their now-empty chairs evoke the haunting presence of these entities, lingering in the space. Striking photographs document the water leakage at the Musée de l'Orangerie during the summer of 1944, when bombings caused ceilings to collapse: water creeping across surfaces, the peeling fabric revealing ghostly floral patterns, uncannily echoing Monet’s final Water Lilies painting. Through this assembly of materials, Gaillard stages a dialogue between natural forces and human constructs, rendering sites into living monuments that combine temporal visions beyond the here and now.

This exhibition continues Haus der Kunst’s vision in reimagining monuments that have lost their original purposes, exploring how public monuments can generate new meanings and collective experience. Following solo exhibitions such as Voices by Philippe Parreno, Mute by Pan Daijing, and Window of Tolerance by Wang Shui, Gaillard’s new exhibition furthers Haus der Kunst’s experimental programme, integrating forefront technology, time-based media, and exploring liveness as a new form of exhibition-making and artistic practice.

Curated by Xue Tan with Lydia Antoniou and Laila Wu.

The exhibition is made possible by the Supporting Friends of Artistic Director and Chief Curator at Haus der Kunst.

For their annual support of our programme, we thank our shareholders, the Free State of Bavaria and the Gesellschaft der Freunde der Stiftung Haus der Kunst München e. V. We further thank our major supporter, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, for their generous commitment to our work, as well as the Ulli und Uwe Kai-Stiftung and the Beisheim Stiftung.