Futura — exhibition in Hamburger Kunsthalle with Attila Csörgő

FUTURA

Measuring Time

14 Jan 2022 to 10 April 2022

Curators: Bogomir Ecker and Brigitte Kölle

To kick off 2022, the exhibition FUTURA will bring together a group of around thirty international artists who deal in their work with fundamental questions regarding temporality, sustainability and visions of the future. About 200 artworks on view engage in surprising dialogues across centuries and disciplines – and many of them are new, created especially for the exhibition. The show marks the 25th year of the ongoing work Tropfsteinmaschine (Dripstone Machine) (1996–2496) by Bogomir Ecker (b. 1950). Running right through the building from roof to base storey, the machine commenced operation with the opening of the Galerie der Gegenwart (Gallery for Contemporary Art of the Hamburger Kunst­halle) and is designed to run for 500 years. Through the interaction of rainwater, a plant biotope in the muse­um foyer, and a piece of limestone, a dripstone, or stalagmite, is gradually being formed. Visitors are taken on a mental journey into the future, inspiring the ques­tions: What is time and how can it be represented and measured artistically? FUTURA expands on these issues to ask how we can shape the future and what art as an aesthetic category can contribute to a »future as a form of thought«. Bogomir Ecker, who is curating the show together with Brigitte Kölle (Head of Col­lection Contemporary Art), has designed the exhi­bition space as an associative and experimental framework for FUTURA. In an arrangement that resembles a playing field, he used recycled museum inventory to build a backdrop for manifes­tations of matter, change and transformation processes that also serves as a plat­form for the works of the participating artists.

Featured artists: Katinka Bock, John Cage, Nina Canell, Gustave Courbet, Attila Csörgő, Hanne Darboven, Edith Dekyndt, Bogomir Ecker, Oswald Egger, Elena Greta Falcini, Ceal Floyer, Caspar David Friedrich, Monika Grzymala, Channa Horwitz, Pierre Huyghe, Daniel Janik, Samson Kambalu, On Kawara, Axel Loytved, Sarah Lucas, Étienne-Jules Marey, Daniel Ott, Johanna Reich, Jens Risch, Philipp Otto Runge, Ani Schulze, Roman Signer, Lucía Simón Medina, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rayyane Tabet and Robin Watkins.