MAXIMILIAN KIRMSE BERLIN MON AMOUR

In the organizer's words:

There is no doubt that the phrase Berlin Mon Amour cannot be understood as a light-hearted declaration of love to a big city whose harsh reality can hardly be flattered. It is a paradox that contains a provocative contradiction that only makes sense on closer inspection. Berlin Mon Amour does not refer to the easy-going attitude to life associated with other metropolises. Rather, it describes a city's very own zest for life and unbridled vitality, whose sense of freedom and openness to the world stands in opposition to paralyzing small-mindedness and provincialism. It is this joie de vivre and vital energy that suspends reactionary stagnation and continues to inspire Berlin's vital spirit of new thinking and rethinking. Drawn by this elixir of life, it enchants those who manage to immerse themselves in it and embark on their own love adventure with the metropolis on the Spree.

Maximilian Kirmse's images tell of precisely this rather laid-back Berlin rhythm of life, without having to resort to grand dramas or invent absurd motifs. Far removed from tourist fantasies of the glamorous old West, sleepwalking party people in Mitte or cool hipsters in the gentrified urban landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, the drawings and paintings capture the unagitated life in his neighborhood. In contrast to the aforementioned clichés, this everydayness is all the more disturbing because it leaves any sensationalism in the dust and, vice versa, holds up a mirror to it. His scenes always seem to be observed from a neutral distance, so that they can neither be seen as "Milljöh" studies nor as a chronicle of a big city.

Without any respect for academic traditions and ignoring the oppressive idea of progress of the avant-garde principle, stylistic and aesthetic elements of "high" and "low" culture meet in Maximilian Kirmse's work in a completely unconstrained manner and combine to form an inseparable conglomerate that constitutes his idiosyncratic and precise signature. Some of his motifs seem to have sprung from comic culture, but at the same time they are also reminiscent of primitivist imagery that may have been borrowed from folk art. Last but not least, his tableaux, not unlike a hyper-nervous, colorful, over-excited thunderstorm of flashlights, illuminate the attitude to life of a fin de siècle. These dissonances are a natural part of Berlin Mon Amour's attitude to life.

However, the curatorial idea of Berlin Mon Amour also presents Maximilian Kirmse as an artist in the tradition of artists who succumbed to Berlin's cool charm throughout the 20th century and, like him, had and still have their own thing going on with the city, to put it somewhat colloquially. Among them are Max Beckmann, Georg Grosz, Jeanne Mammen, Werner Heldt, Christa Dichgans, K. H. Hödicke, Olaf Metzel and Anne Imhof. In this respect, the exhibition title is also an homage. The concentrated selection of individual works from a large abundance of Berlin-related works from classical modernism to the present from the holdings of the Graphische Sammlung München confirms that Berlin has always been something more than what one thought one knew at a specific moment in time. Viewed individually, each of the works presented is a very personal commitment to Berlin. Taken as a whole, they highlight individual moments in the city's history that reflect the multifaceted attitude to life that can be associated with the metropolis on the Spree.

Berlin Mon Amour is also a journey of quiet tones across the city, in which the everyday, the incidental and the fleeting come into focus. In conjunction with the historical sheets, Maximilian Kirmse's view of Berlin thus becomes less a closing point than a prelude to an exciting 21st century of this metropolis.

Curator: Dr. Michael Hering, Director of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich

Price information:

10 euros | reduced 7 euros | Sunday admission 1 euro | day ticket 12 euros