DUSSELDORF.- Lars Eidinger is one of the most famous German actors of our time. From August 31, K21 is presenting his first solo museum exhibition, “O Mensch,” with around 100 photographs and objects. Just as Hamlet, skull in hand, philosophizes about to be or not to be, Eidinger holds his cell phone camera up to a thoroughly designed world and discovers loneliness, overlooked details, and a comic melancholy.

YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND
September 28, 2024 – March 16, 2025
K20 – Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

From September 2024, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in cooperation with Tate Modern, presents a comprehensive solo exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking and influential work of artist and activist Yoko Ono (b. 1933 in Tokyo). Ono is a trailblazer of early conceptual and participatory art, film and performance, a celebrated musician, and a formi- dable campaigner for world peace. Spanning seven decades of the artist’s powerful, multi- disciplinary practice from the mid-1950s to now, YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND traces the development of her innovative work and its enduring impact on contemporary culture.

With more than 200 works, YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND outlines Ono’s radical approach to art, language and participation, from her early ‘instruction’ pieces to her recent, large-scale installations. During this time, Ono moved between Japan, the US and the UK, before settling in New York in 1971. Following a loose chronology, the exhibition highlights recurring themes in Ono’s work, such as her championing of ideas as the foundation of art- making, her engagement with feminist thought, or her anti-war activism.

Ono’s art takes many forms. It includes scores, performances, objects, film, music, sound and events. In 1964, Ono published Grapefruit, her foundational book of instruction works. These concise texts, somewhere between poem and score, aim to unlock the mind. In- structions are presented throughout the exhibition, calling the visitors to participate, often in interaction with others.

The exhibition takes its title from the artist’s desire to stimulate the imagination. Ono notes, ‘The only sound that exists to me is the sound of the mind. My works are only to induce music of the mind in people … In the mind-world, things spread out and go beyond time.’

This expansive logic also extends to the exhibition format itself. As part of the exhibition, works by Ono are presented across K20. Visitors are invited to share their wishes for peace on a Wish Tree close to the entrance to the exhibition. Ono’s instruction Painting to Be Constructed In Your Head (‘Observe three paintings carefully. Mix them well in your head.’) will be on view in the collection display. And PEACE is POWER will spread to both the façade of the museum as well as to the windows of Salon20, where it will guide the view from the inside of the museum onto Düsseldorf’s lively Grabbeplatz.

YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND is organised by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

The exhibition is curated by Patrizia Dander, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Juliet Bingham, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, with Ursula Pokorny and Catherine Frèrejean, Assistant Curators, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Andrew de Brún, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.

Katharina Sieverding
November 1, 2024 – March 23, 2025
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is honoring the work of the internationally renowned Düsseldorf-based photographer Katharina Sieverding (b. 1941 in Prague) with a major survey exhibition. The multiple award-winning artist became famous for her iconic close-ups of her own face and her large-format photographs, which she was one of the first to introduce to the art world in the mid-1970s.

With a strong background in theater studies, she records, dissects, and diagnoses historical and contemporary issues and social wounds, making gender boundaries fluid and questioning the power and abuse of images. Her monumental works, which can be categorized as performance, body art, and experimental film, have added a new dimension to photography. In the context of her interdisciplinary thinking and work, she understands photography as a malleable and transformable material.

To this day, Katharina Sieverding’s work takes a political stance: on National Socialism and the question of German identity against the backdrop of anti-democratic forces, but also on global issues. Her works deal with the causes and consequences of wars and their complex constellations of power and violence, as well as with mankind’s destructive exploitation of planet Earth. Even when her works refer directly to current events, they seem timelessly contemporary.

At K21, in addition to key works from the artist’s nearly sixty-year career, her extensive archive will also be included in the exhibition for the first time as an open space for discourse.

Curator: Isabelle Malz