Psyche and Politics

16.03.–16.06.2019
A modern art gallery featuring large, unique sculptures and installations.
Sculptures of human-like limbs and faces hanging and standing in an art gallery.
Art exhibit with hanging trousers, a small sculpture, and a framed photograph on the wall.
A gallery room with video screen displaying people on mats and soft cushions on the floor.
A worn album cover featuring a blurred portrait and cassette tape.
A round sculpture on a pedestal and a framed paper on a darkened wall in an art gallery.
A sculpture of a child curled up and sleeping on a pillow.
A cozy living room with a television showing a scene with people around a table.
A room displaying multiple screens with close-up images of various people.
A minimalist room with a contrast of dark and white painted walls seen from a hallway.
A room filled with tiny chairs and figurines viewed from above.
People standing and sitting around a glass floor with reflections underneath.
Hang glasses reflect in the shiny floor and black cabinet doors in an atrium.
A gallery room with a display of hanging colorful objects and three blank panels.
An art gallery with multiple monitors displaying videos on beige partitions.
Huge, yellowish fabric panels are suspended in an art gallery room.
An aged and tattered curtain hanging in a well-lit room.
A yellow, wrinkled curtain covers the walls of a gallery room.
Large, tattered yellow garments are suspended from the ceiling in an art exhibit.
A large, aged fabric wall sculpture hangs from a ceiling in a spacious gallery.
Close-up of a tree trunk with a visible hole and flowing sap.
Art gallery showcasing various black and white abstract paintings on light grey walls.
Modern art gallery with blue walls displaying two contrasting pieces.
A gallery display showcasing a grid of vibrant and diverse digital images on a black wall.
A gallery displaying framed black-and-white photos on a dark wall.

Artists

  • Kader Attia
  • Ludwig Berthold
  • Else Blankenhorn
  • Heidi Bucher
  • Omer Fast
  • Dan Finsel
  • Samara Golden
  • Minna Köchler
  • Liz Magic Laser
  • Jim Shaw
  • Wang Tuo
  • Jorinde Voigt
  • Wilhelm Werner
  • Hyacinth Freiherr von Wieser
  • Chen Zhe

Curators

  • Johan Holten
  • Luisa Heese

Curatorial assistance

  • Benedikt Seerieder

Publication

The accompanying catalog was published in 2019 by Hatje Cantz.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Funded by the Federal Government Comissioner for Culture and the Media

To a hitherto unknown extent, social and political processes are now touching upon the most intimate spheres of human beings. New structures of communication carry messages and images into our inner worlds, unfiltered and at any moment. This means - and so runs the exhibition's hypothesis - that the psyche is becoming more and more an arena of the political.

In a globalised world this phenomenon is not restricted to the Western hemisphere. Quite to the contrary: it has a universal effect. The world might be moving closer together but interior landscapes, mental images and reactions which comes from outside are shaped by cultural and social processes.

The exhibition at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden examines processes and poses the question of how these experiences, which are so different all across the globe, can be made visible through art. The exhibition presents the positions of ten international artists who deal with the perception of the self and its transformation into the external world. Against the backdrop of their life experiences in different regions of the world - from the US West Coast over China, Europe to North Africa - they attest to a global interest in the subject as well as heterogenous experiences.

One such example is the work "Reason's Oxymorons" by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia (1970) by focusing on collective inner worlds. Through interviews with European and African therapists, historians, imams, priests, psychologists and ethnologists, Attia shows that the formation and treatment of the psyche is a form of learned and culturally determined knowledge. In so doing the artist negates the assumption that there is a universal basic mental structure which exists in all cultures, and exposes Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis as a Western construct.

Psyche and Politics gathers works by: Kader Attia, Heidi Bucher, Omer Fast, Dan Finsel, Samara Golden, Liz Magic Laser, Jim Shaw, Wang Tuo, Jorinde Voigt, Chen Zhe

With works from the Prinzhorn Collection, by: Ludwig Berthold, Else Blankenhorn, Minna Köchler, Wilhelm Werner, Hyacinth Freiherr von Wieser

Psyche and Politics is the next instalment in a series of exhibitions such as Bilderbedarf. The Civic and the Arts (2012) and Power of the Powerless (2013), focusing on the multifacted importance of art in a globalised social discourse in the 21st century.