Press material for our exhibitions

From November 30, 2024 to February 23, 2025, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld is presenting the exhibition “Dreams of an Owl, Who the Bær and the Wounded Planet”, which reorganizes the Kunsthalle’s collection and is supplemented by an intervention by the British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara.

When do owls dream? What do animals, which in cultural history often stand for foresight and wisdom, dream of? Perhaps the artist Hans (Jean) Arp was hoping for more insight when he renamed his 1937/38 sculpture “Owl” “Owl Dream” in 1957? With his view that artistic and natural processes are of equal value and that man and his actions are always in relation to nature and by no means superior to it, Hans Arp anticipated central aspects of our thinking today.

For the first time in human history, our actions are becoming visible in the planetary system. In view of the climate crisis, a change of perspective is necessary in all areas of life, from the natural sciences, art and culture to politics and everyday life. What role can a museum play in this? Our collections are our visual memory: which images and which new constellations help us to change our thinking and our ideas, our relationship to the world?

Based on Arp’s “Owl Dream” as a key work, the exhibition raises the question of which images inspire or encourage us to change our perspective. A total of 200 works by over 150 international artists will be on display, all of which revolve around the relationship between man and nature. In addition to some classics from the collection, including works by Max Beckmann, Gerhard Richter, Auguste Rodin, Agnes Martin and others, it is also about discovering artists with a regional connection such as Simone Nieweg, Theo Ortmann and Benita Koch-Otte. Donations and acquisitions from recent years will also be on display (including works by Olaf Nicolai, Rita Mc Bride and Katinka Bock). Individual loans (Hans (Jean) Arp, Julia Scher, Charline von Heyl) complement the exhibition. A special exhibition architecture was developed to create a dense and rich visual narrative in the rooms.
Which works or themes from the Kunsthalle Bielefeld collection do we see with different eyes against the backdrop of the climate crisis, planetary thinking – or in short: in the age of man, the “Anthropocene”? And what consequences do we draw from this for our museum work? These questions will not only be examined on an institutional level and with a new perspective on the museum’s own collection, but will also be supplemented by a contemporary artistic voice that gives form to central questions of our reality of life with an intervention by the British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara (*1982 in London, lives in Berlin).

Fujiwara created “Who the Bær”, a fictional character that he has been continuously developing since 2020. “Who the Bær” is a bear, seemingly without gender, sexuality or nationality, who appears in drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations and films and searches for identity and orientation in his engagement with art and museums.

The work “Once Upon a Who?”, a stop-motion animation, tells the story of the character’s origins and the significance of the characteristics attributed to her; processes of identity formation, particularly in relation to gender and race; the influence of mass media, social media, dating apps and celebrity culture on these processes as well as cultural appropriation, colonialism and the controversies surrounding looted art.

With the “dreaming owl” and “Who the Bær”, the exhibition uses figures of fiction and narration and the symbolic and fairytale-like to explore previously unseen fields and contexts in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld’s collection. The playful reorganization of the collection according to categories from the theories of the Anthropocene was developed together with Prof. Dr. Timo Skrandies (Institute of Art History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf). Skrandies has been researching and teaching on the relationship between art and the Anthropocene since 2013. The exhibition project will be accompanied by his chair during its preparation and duration.
The participation of the students is visible in the digital mediation format and in events accompanying the exhibition. On January 17 and 31, 2025, Skrandies and the students will invite visitors in small groups to take various tours of the exhibition.

Simon Fujiwara, born in London in 1982, grew up in Japan, Europe and Africa. He studied at the University of Cambridge and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Fujiwara, who often collaborates with other people to tell supposedly personal stories, questions in his work our idea of the contemporary individual who, self-determined and unique, pursues his own fictionalization. Instead, he confronts us with a rather unstable idea of the self, which can only be realized through the cooperation of

of others can be defined. Recent solo exhibitions by Fujiwara include: new work, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2021); Who the Bær, Fondazione Prada, Milan (2021); Hope House, Blaffer Art Museum, Dallas (2020-21); Joanne, Arken, Ishøj (2019); Revolution, Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2018); Joanne, Galerie Wedding, Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2018); Hope House, Kunsthaus Bregenz (2018), It’s a Small World, Kiasma (2024).

Marina Abramović, Saâdane Afif, Anni Albers, Diane Arbus, Armando, Hans (Jean) Arp, Yto Barrada, Georg Baselitz, Max Beckmann, Rudolf Belling, Julius Bissier, Katinka Bock, Peter August Böckstiegel, Monica Bonvicini, Shannon Bool, Katharina Bosse, Louise Bourgeois, Vera Brüggemann, Peter Brüning, Daniel Buren, Teresa Burga, Michael Buthe, Reg Butler, Heinrich Campendonk, Marc Chagall, Sandro Chia, Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Christa Dichgans, Friedrich Diehl, Otto Dix, Jason Dodge, Marlene Dumas, Herbert Ebersbach, Nicole Eisenman, Max Ernst, Conrad Felixmüller, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Anne Flore, Lucio Fontana, Wolfgang Fräger, Günter Frecksmeier, Simon Fujiwara, Dani Gal, Peter Gallaus, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Otto Gleichmann, Erwin Graumann, Herbert Wilhelm Häfner, Richard Haizmann, Lena Henke, Eduard Herterich, Charline von Heyl, Sheila Hicks, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, David Hockney, Ferdinand Hodler, Gerhard Hoehme, Karl Hofer, Sofia Hultén, Allen Jones, Wassily Kandinsky, Annette Kelm, Anselm Kiefer, Esther Kläs, Jürgen Klauke, Max Klinger, Guitou Knoop, Benita Koch-Otte, Käthe Kollwitz, Wilhelm Laage, Josua Leander Gampp, Fernand Léger, Wilhelm Leibl, August Macke, Goshka Macuga, Franz Marc, Gerhard Marcks, Louis Marcoussis, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Brigitte and Martin Matschinsky-Denninghoff, Rita McBride, Hans Meyboden, Karl Heinz Meyer, Christiane Möbus, Otto Modersohn, Paula Modersohn-Becker, László Moholy-Nagy, Henry Moore, Matthias Müller, Gabriele Münter, Louise Nevelson, Olaf Nicolai, Simone Nieweg, Emil Nolde, Adolf Oberländer, Anna Oppermann, Theo Ortmann, A. R. Penck, Pablo Picasso, Werner Pöschel, Charlotte Posenenske, Veronika Radulovic, Arnulf Rainer, Man Ray, Germaine Richier, Gerhard Richter, Christian Rohlfs, Ulrike Rosenbach, Lars Rosenbohm, Georges Rouault, Ulrich Rückriem, Salvo, Karin Sander, Jörg Sasse, Lo Savio, Julia Scher, Oskar Schlemmer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Georg Schrimpf, Katharina Sieverding, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Hermann Stenner, Irma Stern, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Rago Torre-Ebeling, Hans Uhlmann, Not Vital, Heinrich Vogeler, James Welling, Erwin Wendt, Stephen Wilks, Fritz Winter