His direct and theoretically concise works are simultaneously poetic, metaphorical, ecological, and in many respects extremely contemporary. On several occasions, his controversial artistic contributions to current debates were censored from exhibitions. Artistically, he has pursued a variety of strategies, becoming involved early on in the fields of ecology and natural sciences, drawing on approaches from the ZERO group, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, public art, and poster art, among others. As a central pioneer of Institutional Critique within Conceptual Art, his works examined orders or systems and presented them comparatively. The artist himself describes the world as a supersystem with countless subsystems, each of which is more or less influenced by the others. Systemic thinking, institutional critique, and democracy are the major themes running throughout Haacke’s oeuvre.
The SCHIRN is showing iconic early works from the 1960s, his influential real-time systems, pieces that invite public participation, as well as expansive (historical) political installations. With around seventy paintings, photographs, objects, installations, actions, posters, and a film, the exhibition illustrates how Haacke became one of the world’s most important and influential political artists for subsequent generations.
For this comprehensive retrospective, the SCHIRN was able to bring together in Frankfurt major works by the artist from international public and private collections, including: Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; FRAC Bourgogne Dijon Collection; Generali Foundation Collection at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; LACMA, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; MACBA, Barcelona; the Lila and Gilbert Silverman Collection, Detroit; TATE London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
An exhibition organized by SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE
FRANKFURT in cooperation with Belvedere, Vienna
