Introduction

The Hamburger Bahnhof holds an exhibition entitled Under Construction, presenting the latest additions to the Nationalgalerie collection, including works by Ceal Floyer and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.

Ever since the institution was founded in 1861, the collection of the Nationalgalerie has continually been expanded to include contemporary works from each passing era. The collection has been “under reconstruction” since the exhibition and research project Hello World: Revising a Collection (2018), which reflected on the political and cultural ramifications of the Nationalgalerie’s approach to collecting, and called for non-Western art movements and transcultural approaches to be incorporated into the museum’s practices and collections. In a presentation of selected new acquisitions, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin is showing works by international artists in various media, including painting, installation, sculpture, video and works on paper.

On view are three works from Ceal Floyer, two works that play on our expectations of what we may encounter in an exhibition space and also on our notion of what an art work is – Peel, 2003, a soundless video projection where empty white walls raise the expectation that objects will be shown, and Projection, 1997, a slide projector that projects a roughly rectangular field of light, as if the slide were empty, yet on closer inspection one notices the image of a nail. The third work in the exhibition from Floyer, Watercolour, 2004, consists of a monitor showing a white screen which turns blue, then green, then red; the alterations of colour corresponding to the chromatic make-up of video technology. But like an aural mnemonic, the subtle ‘plink, plink’ of the soundtrack gently coaches the realization that what is being shown is a close up of a glass of water with a brush being cleaned.

For the exhibition Daniel Steegmann Mangrané has created a large curtain work consisting of three separate sections, that are placed closely together, oscillating between appearing as a diaphanous screen and semi-solid object, existing in a hybrid state between corporeality and immateriality. Additionally, the artist has conceived the whole space in which the curtains are on view, selecting and placing other works of his as well as a historical work from the collection in a way that creates multiple perspectives and connections with and through the curtains.

Under Construction
New Acquisitions for the Nationalgalerie’s Collection
With Ceal Floyer and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Hamburger Bahnhof
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin
June 2, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Opening: June 1st 2022, from 7 p.m.
www.smb.museum
www.underconstructioninberlin.de