Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Hannover

Opening remarks Jan Kage, curator, author, and cultural studies scholar, Berlin UNDERCOVER – hiding one’s true identity, covert action. UNDERCOVER – this exhibition shows that artistic work may entail both presentation and deliberate concealment. WOLFGANG FLAD develops large-format sculptures characterised by dynamism, movement and organic growth structures. Coloured reflective glass gives the visible aspect of his wall objects another layer, in which forms emerge and disappear again beneath the surface. Their materiality remains inconclusive. In his object painting, JÜRGEN PAAS deals with the relationship between colour and surface, system and confusion. Colour, rhythm and order fuse into a surprising visual language whose materiality also defies interpretation. UNDERCOVER describes the attitude of both artists – the essence is concealed beneath the superficially visible. The artists will be present.

Sezession. Trotz vielseitiger Erfolge während der 1910er und -20er Jahre ist er heute nahezu vergessen. Es gilt daher, einen bedeutenden Maler und Zeichner, der über das lokale Hannover weit ausstrahlte, wieder zu entdecken. Gleichmanns Werk ist getragen von humanitärem Pathos und feinster Sensibilität, sein Hauptthema ist der Mensch. Seine stilisierten, unverkennbaren Gesichter mit den groß aufgerissenen Katzenaugen zeugen von den unmittelbar erlebten Schrecknissen des 1. Weltkrieges. Seine verwunschenen Gestalten durchstreifen dicht gedrängte Städtelandschaften oder vergnügen sich in Varietés und Zirkussen. Menschliche Beziehungen wie Einsamkeit und Nähe werden in vielfigurigen, psychologisch erfassten Gruppenbilden ausgelotet. Sein Repertoire konzentriert sich sein Leben lang auf Figurenbilder in vielfältigen Konstellationen, vereinzelt kommen Tierbilder, hier vor allem Katzen und Pferde, Blumenstillleben und wenige Landschaftsbilder hinzu. Insofern lässt sich die stilistische Entwicklung der einzelnen Motive zu einer neuen Eigenständigkeit über die fast 50jährige Schaffenszeit hervorragend verfolgen: von der dunklen, leidenden Kreatürlichkeit der expressiven Phase hin

The Artist and Filmmaker Karimah Ashadu (b. 1985, London) lives and works between Hamburg and Lagos. Since the early 2010s, she has developed a practice that homes in on Nigeria, probing notions of independence and value through individuals who work and live there: butchers, cowboys, miners, motorcycle-taxi drivers, and bodybuilders. Their lives are shaped within the country's informal economies, where daily labor secures survival while carrying the dream of a self-determined life. Film forms the core of her practice, alongside photography, sculpture and painting. With Crystalline, the Kestner Gesellschaft presents her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. At its center is the world premiere of the film WAVES (2026), on view in the domed hall of the Goseriedebad, a former bathhouse. The film is presented alongside eight new photographs and the sculpture Auric Field (2026) in an installation developed for the Kestner Gesellschaft. Like her films, the exhibition spaces are conceived in painterly terms; through the precise use of color and light, Ashadu's moving images become part of the architecture itself.

The Kestner Gesellschaft is pleased to present A Pronoun of B, the first comprehensive solo exhibition by Min Yoon (b. 1986 in Cheonan). Born in South Korea and based in Vienna, Yoon works across drawing, painting, and sculpture to reflect on processes of artmaking and the institutional structures that shape art and its production. His work often expands into exuberant, multipart installations whose playful structures weave together a range of interests, contexts, and materials. The letter “B” in the title of the exhibition at Kestner Gesellschaft is believed to have evolved from an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph and a Proto-Sinaitic sign resembling the floor plan of a house. For Min Yoon, “B” represents a linguistic and spatial abstraction of the idea of one’s own space. Through “B”, he initiates a reconfiguration of Kestner Gesellschaft that begins outside the building, where he alters the institution’s name above the main entrance. Some letters appear to have fallen, while others have been added, together forming the sequence “NA DA UM.” In Korean, this can be read as 나다움( na-da-um ), meaning “being myself” or “being as one is.” In German, by contrast, “na” (“well”), “da” (“there”), and “um” (around)” are perceived as distinct linguistic units. This play with language sets the tone for what unfolds inside the building, where the linguistic, spatial, and temporal dimensions of “B” are further explored through a new site-specific installation and newly created groups of paintings are presented alongside a selection of works from the past three years. Upon entering the building, visitors encounter a stage-like ensemble of sculptures depicting figures: Other Hand (2025), an oversized felt hand puppet, alludes to the processes of artmaking and the labor that takes place behind the scenes. Exit Snail Enter Snail (2024), a large gray snail, evokes a slowed-down, embodied, and individual experience of time. Digest / Wait + ing Time to Emit (2024), a headless figure whose hat is mounted on a curved steel structure, links questions of time and waiting to the pressures of productivity and consumption. “Emit”—“time” read in reverse—means to send out, release, or discharge. Here, what is released are chains of wool and thread that stretch across the room between metal stanchions, imposing a physical distance between viewers and the sculptures. Opposite this ensemble, a new series of eight paintings, 1B Time through 8B Time (2026), depicts hourglasses filled with the letter “B”, turning “B” itself into a unit of time that also registers time’s B-side. The hourglasses’ alternative measure of time opens onto a broader investigation of space and systems of measurement in a new room-encompassing installation, produced specifically for the exhibition and presented for the first time in Hannover. Extending along the walls of the second exhibition hall and across approximately 400 square meters, a sculptural wooden structure incorporates an array of objects, including animals, paintings, clothes hangers, wooden block wagons, and display supports found on site, such as pedestals and an easel. Engraved at intervals of 20.5 centimeters, the structure follows a unit devised by the artist that corresponds to no official standard. The installation instead proposes a personal system of measurement, raising questions about how spaces and bodies are quantified. Measuring devices such as a growth chart and a pantograph for copying and enlarging drawings become part of the sculptural apparatus, linking the abstraction of measurement back to the physical, lived body.