BERLIN.- The exhibition What’s going on? marks the beginning of the program by Dennis Brzek, the new director of Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin. The group exhibition brings together works by Dora Budor, Clara Hausmann, Samuel Jeffery, Tam Ochiai, Oliver Tirré, Melvin Way, and Constantina Zavitsanos, combining existing pieces with new commissions developed in dialogue with the site. Through the lens of artistic practice, What’s going on? approaches the tension between the past and present of the historical Haus Lemke, where the institution is located. The works on view raise questions about time, absence, and personal narratives, making both private and shared memories their material.

Under the direction of Dennis Brzek, Mies van der Rohe Haus is embarking on new institutional paths. Located in Berlin's eastern neighborhood of Alt-Hohenschönhausen, with direct access to park and lake, the institution is committed to enabling artistic practice, communicating its themes broadly, and making them accessible through a range of approaches.

Mies van der Rohe Haus is an exhibition space for contemporary art that mediates between past and present. A central thread of the program is a sustained reflection on architecture and its social contexts, with the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe serving as material for artistic inquiry. A holistic program of site-specific exhibitions, newly commissioned works, and cross-institutional collaborations provides Mies van der Rohe Haus with a flexible institutional vocabulary, deliberately open to diverse audiences and differing perspectives on duration, attention, and the transmission of knowledge.

What’s going on?

Over decades altered and worn down, Haus Lemke only became the architectural landmark known today through its restoration in accordance with monument preservation standards between 2000 and 2002. In the course of this work, all traces of previous uses and inhabitants were removed. In its current form, Haus Lemke is, to a certain degree, a fiction, painstakingly reconstructed on the basis of archival material and restored with contemporary means as faithfully as possible. Soon approaching its 100th anniversary, the building exists in a seemingly time suspended state that continually seeks an ideal condition. With the exhibition What’s going on?, the institution initiates a reflective engagement with the logic of the monument. By working with found objects, dissolving the boundaries between intention and chance, and opening up branching narratives through personal stories, the exhibition asks how remembering might function.

Working from an expanded notion of artistic practice, Oliver Tirré’s sculptures, developed in direct engagement with context and site, draw on everyday activities and highlight how form can emerge from very little when given attention and care. Constantina Zavitsanos focuses on how the frictions between life and the rules that govern it can unsettle conventional notions of artistic practice, making alternative definitions of bodies and time visible. Samuel Jeffery engages with reality and uses the exhibition as a time-based medium to make the threshold between absence and presence tangible. Dora Budor’s site-specific wall work Nicotine Museum uses stage-set pigment designed to simulate rooms discolored by cigarette smoke to outline traces of former furniture on the walls. Tam Ochiai’s sketches depict iconic buildings by Mies van der Rohe daydreaming, playfully engaging the seriousness of the medium in order to open it to anthropomorphic fantasies. Melvin Way’s compelling drawings, produced over months despite their compact format, reflect his persistent search for the connections within the world, an investigation of the languages and systems of the natural sciences, which Clara Hausmann also engages with in a new work.

Program 2026

The 2026 exhibition program also includes the month-long event series Open House (August 4 to September 6, 2026), for which artists will realize temporary interventions that extend into the garden, as well as a solo exhibition by Matt Browning (September 12, 2026 to January 10, 2027), developed in collaboration with Kunstverein München.

Projects in the new series On and Off, which commissions participatory works produced in dialogue with social and spatial contexts, expand the role of Mies van der Rohe Haus as a commissioning body and supporter of artistic production. On the occasion of the centenary of Mies van der Rohe's Revolution Memorial, Nils Norman will conceive a temporary intervention on its former site at Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (June to July 2026). Mania Godarzani-Bakhtiari will develop a project with young adults that, through a series of workshops that draw on the works in the exhibition What’s going on?, explores active approaches to art and language.

An accompanying podcast series and artist-curated mixtapes created for visits to the garden give sound a more prominent role. Building on earlier research initiatives, Mies van der Rohe Haus invites new critical perspectives and strengthens the presence of artistic research, continuing to shape the identity of the site.

In the coming years, the focus remains on how Mies van der Rohe Haus can more fully understand itself as a place for the public, and how the house can become a social meeting point that allows people to spend time in different ways.

Mies van der Rohe Haus

Mies van der Rohe Haus is the present-day name of the former Haus Lemke, built in 1932–33 by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a residence for Karl and Martha Lemke. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Lemkes were forced to vacate the building, after which it was taken over by the GDR’s Ministry for State Security and used for various purposes. Structural alterations affected the architecture.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the site became part of initiatives aimed at opening former Stasi properties to the public. In 1990, Mies van der Rohe Haus was established as an exhibition venue. Between 2000 and 2002, the building was carefully restored in accordance with heritage guidelines and brought closer to its original design on the basis of the architectural plans.

The program 2026 is curated by Dennis Brzek, Director of Mies van der Rohe Haus.