From 17 January 2026 on, the artist Rebecca Horn (1944–2024) is honoured with a dedicated space overlooking the Sculpture Garden within the collection display Extreme Tension. Art Between Politics and Society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945–2000. On view are four mechanical-kinetic works: How about a Couple of Sailors? (1990) and The Butterfly Swing (1996) as donations from the Ulla & Heiner Pietzsch Collection have rarely been shown in museums before. They enter into dialogue with works from the Nationalgalerie’s own holdings: Caressing the Egg Between (2007) and The Painting Machine (Aria in Black) (1991).
The room entitled Rebecca Horn: Human, Nature, Machine serves as a preview for the presentation of several works by Rebecca Horn in the new museum building berlin modern at the Kulturforum. This will include her significant installation Room of the Wounded Ape (1990/1996/2020) (Raum des verwundeten Affen) from the Nationalgalerie collection, which will be adapted specifically for the site in the new building.
By the late 1970s, Horn shifted her focus from individual bodily experiences to mechanical and kinetic installations that often evoke a sense of mystery. Movement only begins when someone enters the space: “The audience becomes the performer,” as the artist stated.
In the large-scale installation Painting Machine (Aria in Black) (1991), Horn questioned the patriarchal myth of the artistic genius, letting a machine create an abstract wall painting. Black ink is sprayed in gestural bands across the wall. The spray device, which can be set into motion again and again, recalls this one-time act of creation through its movement.
In Horn’s work, liquids and dyeing processes point to biological cycles and interpersonal dynamics. She often referred to alchemy, a natural philosophical approach concerned with the meaning and transformation of substances. In this context, the black pigment might allude to the dark bile of melancholy.
Self-constructed, mechanically driven objects, such as a telephone receiver rocking rhythmically or butterfly wings gently fluttering, symbolise human relationships and emotions within the tension between love and eroticism, closeness and distance. Since the 1990s, the butterfly has been a recurring motif in Horn’s installations, evoking transformation and fragility. Similarly, the egg can be seen as a symbol of femininity, new life, and the duality of interior and exterior.