HANS HAACKE. RETROSPECTIVE

Hans Haacke (b. 1936) has shaped “polit­ical art” to a greater extent than any other artist of his gener­a­tion. Keen crit­i­cism of insti­tu­tions, polit­ical aware­ness, and an uncom­pro­mising defense of demo­c­ratic prin­ci­ples to the point of activism all char­ac­terize his approach. His work is marked by direct­ness and theo­ret­ical clarity, and yet it is poetic, metaphor­ical, ecolog­ical, and in many respects highly topical at the same time. More than once his contro­ver­sial artistic contri­bu­tions to contem­po­rary discourse have been excluded from exhi­bi­tions. In a wide-ranging retro­spec­tive, the SCHIRN will be exam­ining Haacke’s influ­en­tial oeuvre from 1959 to the present day. He has pursued a variety of artistic strate­gies, working from an early stage in the fields of ecology and science and taking up the approaches of, for example, the group ZERO and minimal art, as well as concep­tual art, art in public space, and poster art. The exhi­bi­tion at the SCHIRN, with some 70 paint­ings, objects, photographs, and instal­la­tions, demon­strates how Haacke became one of the most impor­tant polit­ical artists on the inter­na­tional art stage.