Magical Soup

Magical Soup
Media Art from the Nationalgalerie Collection, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof and Loans

September 6, 2020–January 3, 2021

Music has the power to create imaginary worlds. Sounds can physically shake up rooms. And images can conjure up auditory spaces that draw us beyond canvases and screens. The survey exhibition Magical Soup revolves around the power and magic inherent in images, sound, music and language—that magical force which enables them to create new realities, reveal hidden ones and even escape normative ones. The works range between precise observation, radical self-expression, and deliberate deconstruction of identity.

The relationship between image and sound is explored here in time-based media artworks dating from the 1970s to the present day, as well as in a number of installations and works on paper. Spaciously presented across more than 2,000 square metres in Hamburger Bahnhof’s Rieckhallen, Magical Soup features 49 works drawn from the extensive holdings of video and media art in the collection of the Nationalgalerie and the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof, supplemented by a selection of loans.

A journey through the history of media art
Magical Soup also takes viewers on a journey through the history of media art and its technological developments. The Nationalgalerie has one of the most extensive museum collections of media art in Europe. Its holdings of important historical video art have been supplemented over the last few years by exceptional time-based works of recent origin.

The exhibition follows these explorations of the relationship between (moving) image and sound with works from media art pioneers to a younger generation of artists.

Nevin Aladağ, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Trisha Baga, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Stan Douglas, Cyprien Gaillard, Jochen Gerz, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Dmitry Gutov, Anne Imhof, Christine Sun Kim, Joan La Barbara, Sandra Mujinga, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Ulrike Rosenbach, Pipilotti Rist, Lawrence Weiner, Nicole Wermers, Keiichi Tanaami, Diana Thater, Sung Tieu, David Zink Yi.

Curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers

Exhibition catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with texts by Sven Beckstette, Lisa Bosbach, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Will Fredo Furtado, Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Wulf Herzogenrath, Jee-Hae Kim, Charlotte Knaup, Corinna Kühn, Miriam Lowack, Nika Nardelli, Nina Schallenberg, Kristina Schrei, Chloe Stead, Jessica L. E. Taylor.
The exhibition catalogue will be available in October 2020 (Wienand Verlag).