Hamburger Bahnhof

Pan Daijing, Dan Lie, Hanne Lippard and James Richards receive the Preis der Nationalgalerie, which will be awarded to four artists for the first time in 2024. The new productions developed with the prize money will be shown in a group exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof and will subsequently become part of the Nationalgalerie's collection. The exhibition opens with three admission-free days and the start of the second edition of the open-air DJ series ‘Berlin Beats’.

The artistic positions of the prizewinners Pan Daijing, Dan Lie, Hanne Lippard and James Richards form a lively dialogue with the contemporary art scene in Germany. With four newly commissioned works that will be included in the Nationalgalerie's collection, the prize supports the artists' development at an important stage in their careers. Each of the four has conceived a space that expresses different aspects of their multi-layered practice. The four installations interact with the architecture of the exhibition spaces in different ways, for example through sound, light, moving images and biological matter.

James Richards' practice combines found and original imagery in an installation of film, posters and sculpture. An important part of Richards' practice is collaboration with other artists, resulting in multi-layered works. The three works on display are collages of images and sounds that combine archival material with self-created content. In the poster series ‘Our Friends in the Audience’ and the installation ‘Novel Pleasures’, which were both created in collaboration with other artists, James Richards appropriates found images and places them in new relationships to one another. The film ‘The Speed of Mercy’ combines historical graffiti with close-ups of restoration processes on artworks from the Hamburger Bahnhof collection.

Hanne Lippard uses her own voice in two sound works that utilise language as a medium and examine its structures. ‘Look for Words’ is a twenty-minute, repetitive sound piece that scrutinises grammatical rules. A text written by the artist constantly changes its meaning by being continuously taken apart and reassembled. ‘Stele’ is a sculpture reminiscent of ancient, upright stone tablets or columns, which typically bear an inscription. However, Lippard's ‘Stele’ does not communicate through engraved text, but through uninterrupted murmuring, thus transforming its luminous surface into a medium for embodied sound.

Complex soundscapes and visual compositions are also elements that Pan Daijing uses in her space. Hidden loudspeakers play piano music, which is the sound of a film shot during the artist's exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich in spring 2024. As part of Daijing's site-specific installation ‘After Fugue’ at Hamburger Bahnhof, the film, which is a continuation of a performance by the artist, is shown on the only white wall in a carpeted room.

Dan Lie's sculptural use of organic materials invites visitors to experience processes of growth and decay. Lie's practice addresses the passage of time, the interplay between human and other-than-human organisms and the creation of habitats without human intervention. ‘The Reek’ is an installation developed in the exhibition space that contains elements such as fungi, plants, bacteria and insects. These inhabitants, which undergo processes of growth and decay, can be perceived by visitors with different senses. Central to ‘The Reek’ is the changing odour, which forms an invisible architecture that evokes memories and emotions.

The exhibition is curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, directors, Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.