First off, some exciting news: we have added yet another great city to our roster of contemporary art hotspots around the globe. Exhibitionary now also covers Munich! And what better moment than now? Having had a breezy hiatus over the summer, the art world has returned to its usual hustle with lots of private views, art fairs and weekends to come. So, before the “Wiesn” is calling their drinking army to iron their dirndls and lederhosen, Munich has a whole load of art-frenzy coming your way.

We are happy to announce that we have partnered with Various Others. It is a cooperative project, where galleries and off-spaces invite international partner-galleries to develop an exhibition project together. Besides, some of Munich’s best museums will be offering a wide thematic frame with an array of events to accompany their exhibitions.

The joint openings and events are scheduled for the weekend 14–16 September, but the whole program – ranging from discussions, artist talks to lectures and presentations – spans over a period of five weeks, ending on 21 October. Here's a selection of some highlights we think are worth seeing. Feel free to pin them to your Picks in our app or curate your own list of gallery-hopping of Various Others. 

Jahn und Jahn collaborates with Lateral ArtSpace (Cluj/Romania) and Galerie Max Hetzler (Berlin/Paris/London) and presents works by Ioan Grosu, Lucian Indrei, Mirela Moscu, and Navid Nuur, that revolve around conceptions of the image, its processes, and perception. Nuur's site-specific wall work raises the question of materiality, conventions, and limitations of painting, using colored smoke cartridges to create an image in an autonomous way. Ioan Grosu oscillates between different media through a process of reworking, approaching multi-layered topics through methods of deconstruction and translation, entangling the viewer in a permanent state of search and discovery. Artist Mirela Moscu moves between abstraction and figuration blending collective memory and personal identity in gestural paintings. Lucian Indrei’s site-specific installation “Hole truth – hole in the wall” will be a photograph that shows a cracked wall, a one-to-one version of the photo’s motif that is concealed. But other than with Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs that would come to mind, in Indrei’s work the object of reference remains hidden.

Jahn und Jahn, Baaderstrasse 56 B and C, 80469 Munich

Reloading the Avantgarde at Galerie Sabine Knust

Referencing “The Last Futurist Exhibition 0.10” back in 1915 where Malevich first showed his painting The Black Square which later became a seminal work for the Avantgarde, Sitor Senghor from Paris, hosted by Galerie Sabine Knust, brings a fresh take on Avantgarde for 2018 with “0.10 RELOADED: Afroamerican and African artists as role models of a new humanistic Avantgarde,” curated by Eva Karcher. Next to Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui (you might know him for his iconic metallic cloth-like “bottle-top” wall sculptures, drawing connections between consumption, waste & the environment), sculptorAlison Saar is also featured in this exhibition. Communicating her ideas and emotions through the power of form, her sculptures have their own vocabulary that speak in a direct language about history, race, and mythology.

The multi-screen installations and photographs of filmmaker and artists, Isaac Julien incorporate different artistic disciplines, breaking down barriers that exist between various art forms, and create a poetic and unique visual language. Multimedia artist Elia Alba collapses categories altogether and works with boundaries that become fluid. In her recent photographic projects, she set about reimagining fellow artists of color in fantastical images, often with Afrofuturist aesthetics. 

Galerie Sabine Knust, Ludwigstrasse 7, 80539 Munich

From the Beloved World to postcolonial modernism in India at Haus der Kunst

A former student of Joseph Beuys, Jörg Immendorff cultivated his image as an artist and general tough guy/rebel in the 1960s, getting himself expelled for (left-wing) political activities and neo-dadaist actions at the time. But he also had a soft and thoughtful side that can be discovered in the exhibition “For all the Beloved in the World” in addition to his political sense of mission. The retrospective at Haus der Kunst showcases nearly 200 works.

Additionally, to its ongoing exhibition “Vivan Sundaram: Disjunctures” the institution hosts the lecture “Lines of Descent” by the art historian and curator Deepak Ananth. Centering on history, memory and the archive as thematic fundamentals, memory and the archive as thematic fundamentals, Ananth also focuses on biographical complexions of Sundaram himself, putting it in context of the idea of ‘the modern’ in India during the crucial moment of the country’s passage towards independence from colonial rule.

Haus der Kunst, Prinzregentenstrasse 1, 80538 Munich

Nature rules with Galerie Klüser und Kicken Berlin

Galerie Klüser has invited the renowned photo gallery Kicken Berlin to work on an exhibition project entitled “Il Mondo Botanico.” What at first sight, seems very botanical indeed, turns out to be somewhat of a political statement. It was Joseph Beuys who noted in a conversation that “until only a few decades ago mankind had needed to protect himself from nature, and now nature needs protection from mankind.” Whilst the broad selection of drawings, watercolors, and collages by Joseph Beuys, James Brown, Paul Cézanne, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol concentrate on comparable approaches to capturing the botanical world, the photographs enter into a dialog with a central theme of art history as well as the relations between mankind, nature, and art. The photo section encompasses single prints and series of works by Karl Blossfeldt, Ernst Fuhrmann, Peter Keetman, Heinrich Kühn, László Moholo-Nagy, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Picasso/Villers, and Josef Sudek. 

Galerie Klüser, Georgenstrasse 15, 80799 Munich
Galerie Klüser 2, Türkenstrasse 23, 80799 Munich

Stuck in Limbo with M+M at Museum Villa Stuck

On the first floor of Villa Stuck, artist duo M+M (Marc Weis and Martin De Mattia) have converted the gallery space into a threshold area that is both an object in itself but also a functional room for showcasing their work. On display is a curtain on which more than 50,000 film stills are printed, from a film where M+M have invited artists to a screening and filmed them buying tickets and snacks, waiting for it to begin. Essentially, when you look at this curtain that measures 60 meters in length and forms a small cinema theatre, you look at 30 minutes of bored anticipation which, surprisingly, is quite intriguing. Inside the installation/theatre will be film screenings by M+M. 

Museum Villa Stuck, Prinzregentenstrasse 60, 81675 Munich

Finding Hope at Galerie Christine Mayer

Galerie Christine Mayer hosts Hauser & Wirth, showcasing artist Andy Hope 1930 (fka Andreas Hofer) with the exhibition “A Space Philosophy: Plozloz and Beyond.” Andy Hope 1930’s subject matter ranges from superheroes, dinosaurs, spaceships to philosophy, resulting in a complex iconography that draws on high and popular cultures, literary and aesthetic tropes as well as social constructions. Hope assumes the role of a time traveler, proclaiming a persona linked to the year 1930 with its historical associations of avant-garde and projecting a person of alien modernity.

Galerie Christine Mayer, Liebigstrasse 39, 80538 Munich

Seeing the Sea with Sophie Calle at Espace Louis Vuitton

Two seminal works of artist Sophie Calle are on view at Espace Louis Vuitton: L’Hotel and Voir la mer. Back in 1981, Calle spent three weeks working as chambermaid/artistic spy in a hotel in Venice, photographing the momentarily unoccupied hotel rooms: unmade beds, contents of suitcases, letters, stray items in bathrooms and thus turning the viewer into an accomplice of her voyeurism. For Voir la mer (2011), Sophie Calle invited inhabitants of Istanbul to see the sea for the first time. Each person is filmed from behind, eventually turning to face the camera, revealing the emotions the experience has evoked. 

Espace Louis Vuitton, Maximilianstraße 2a 80539 Munich

Pickelporno, HDK and Sammlung Goetz at Filmmuseum

Accompanying the exhibition “Generations Part 2. Female Artists in Dialogue” of works by women such as Tracey Emin, Yayoi Kusama and Sam Taylor-Johnson at Haus der Kunst, Sammlung Goetz hosts a film screening at Filmmuseum on 27 September, showing works of the Swiss pioneer of spatial video art, Pipilotti Rist. For one night only there is a chance to see the famous single-channel videos I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) and Pickelporno (1992) as well as Pepperminta (2009), Rist's first feature film, a charming combination of fantastical storytelling, stop-motion sequences and a bucketload of color.

Filmmuseum, Sankt-Jakobs-Platz 1, 80331 Munich
Hosted by Sammlung Goetz

— Naa Teki Lebar