BERLIN.- The Nationalgalerie at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin is presenting a special exhibition entitled Capital. Debt – Territory – Utopia, which is on show until 6 November 2016. Featuring works by some 40 international contemporary artists in dialogue with selected artworks and artefacts from antiquity through to the present day, the exhibition seeks to explore humanity’s complex relationship with capital.
The exhibition, curated by Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols, revolves around Joseph Beuys’s groundbreaking work DAS KAPITAL RAUM 1970–1977 (The Capital Space 1970–1977), first conceived for the 1980 Venice Biennale and now on show in Berlin for the first time. Purchased by collector Erich Marx in 2014, the work is now on permanent loan to the Nationalgalerie. This monumental composition is one of the largest environments in Beuys’s oeuvre and sums up his artistic work of the 1970s. During those years a new definition of »capital« took shape in Beuys’s mind, a definition which, extending far beyond the bounds of the monetary, situated human creativity firmly at the centre of economic thought: »Art = Capital«.
Spanning some 1000 square metres and designed by raumlabor_berlin, the exhibition unfolds within three sections: Debt, Territory and Utopia. At times poetic, at times essayistic in its approach, the survey takes up the challenge of engaging from a contemporary perspective with Beuys’s paradigm shift, thereby questioning the notion and nature of capital. The envisaged dialogue between representative exhibits from the extraordinarily rich collections of the State Museums of Berlin and a selection of internationally acclaimed, and predominantly more recent, artistic approaches revolves around the question of what capital has been, is and, above all, could be. Showcasing artworks and music, films and objects drawn from all over the world, the presentation explores the essence of value.
The first section of the exhibition – Debt – is based on the premise that debt, whether material or moral, is older and more fundamental than money. Our economic relationship with our fellow human beings and the world begins at birth, at the moment we take our first breath. Common to most religions in one form or another, this original debt sets in motion a lifelong interplay of receiving and giving. It constitutes both the starting point and the foundation of every human relationship. The second section of the exhibition – Territory – explores the increasing entanglement of capital with the discovery and conquest, appropriation and transformation of global space as of the early modern era. The third section – Utopia – looks into Joseph Beuys’s positive, creativity-oriented reimagining of capital from where we are now.
To accompany the exhibition, a comprehensive, richly illustrated catalogue has been published by Verlag Kettler. Designed by the awardwinning graphic designers cyan, Berlin, the book appears in separate German and English editions. It contains essays by Eugen Blume and Catherine Nichols alongside selected texts by authors ranging from Søren Kierkegaard to Kate Soper, from Audre Lorde to Mogobe B. Ramose. It also features an annotated list of works with commentary by An Paenhuysen and original collages by cyan, 30 x 24 cm, 49 Euros, ISBN 978–3– 86206–575–2 (German edition), 978–3–86206–576–9 (English edition).
