„Dieter Nuhr – Woanders ist überall"

In the organizer's words:

Dieter Nuhr is known to a wide audience primarily as a multi-award-winning cabaret artist and satirist. In recent years, however, his paintings, drawings and photographs have increasingly become the focus of public attention. As a multimedia artist, he has created an impressive oeuvre as a visual artist over many years, which is increasingly stepping out of the shadow of his performing work. His works have been exhibited in the Ruhr region and in museums and galleries worldwide, including in Vienna, Rome, Hagen, Venice, Beijing, Shanghai and Dakar.

In the solo exhibition "Dieter Nuhr - Woanders ist überall" at the Bavarian National Museum, which is sponsored by the Brost Foundation in Essen and coordinated by the Düsseldorf-based Association for Art in Public, he is presenting predominantly large-format photographic works, paintings and drawings from his most recent series of works. The Ruhr area, one of the largest industrial regions in Europe, where Nuhr was born and grew up, plays a central role. In Munich, these motifs enter into a fascinating dialog with impressions from the most remote regions of the world, which Nuhr tirelessly explores on his travels and captures with his camera.

"Dieter Nuhr - Everywhere else is everywhere"

Dieter Nuhr's artistic motifs are diverse. They include impressive landscapes, portraits and everyday scenes, which he captures on his travels through all continents as well as in his immediate surroundings. With the same inquiring eye, he explores the Ruhr region, his home, as well as distant countries such as India, Laos and Senegal. Nuhr's focus is always on the special, the unique and the often unnoticed. For his drawings, he also draws on autobiographical and historical sources as well as materials from museums and archives that tell the story of the Ruhr region, including his own.

The multimedia artist subjects his photographs and drawings to elaborate digital processing. He combines various photographic materials, colors, patterns and structures, thereby robbing the images of their unambiguousness. This artistic alienation thematizes the duality of foreignness and familiarity, distance and proximity, as well as our relationship to the world and our home.

The exhibition "Dieter Nuhr - Woanders ist überall" at the Bavarian National Museum is the second stop on an international exhibition tour that will continue until 2028 with a total of ten stops worldwide. It is made possible by the Brost Foundation, one of the largest foundations for art and culture in Germany, and coordinated by the Association for Art in Public. Next year, the exhibition will be on show at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in the Cuban capital Havana, among other venues.

"The title is more of an appeal than an interpretation: 'Elsewhere is everywhere'. The eloquent Mr. Nuhr is not making a pun or aphorism with his title. It is the quintessence of his 'expedition into the heartland'. Dieter Nuhr explores the Ruhr region from a historical perspective. But - and this is a subjective perception - it is not a matter of documentation or observation. It is about force fields and formative factors. The identifiable metaphors are 'bridge' and 'encounter'," says Prof. Bodo Hombach, Chairman of the Brost Foundation's Board of Directors, describing the exhibition.

"Dieter Nuhr has established himself as a multimedia artist alongside his career as a cabaret artist. His impressive oeuvre, exhibited in renowned museums and galleries worldwide, reflects his deep connection to the Ruhr region as well as his travels to remote corners of the world. The exhibition 'Woanders ist überall' at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum shows Nuhr's unique ability to create a fascinating dialog between the familiar and the unfamiliar," comments Dirk Geuer, curator of the Association for Art in Public.

Price information:

The exhibition is included in the regular admission price and is shown on the main floor in the Mars-Venus Hall.