In Summer 2023, DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam will show a selection of works from the Hasso Plattner Collection from the period after 1945 in the exhibition WERK STATT SAMMLUNG (meaning both Work Instead of a Collection and Workshop Collection) and simultaneously invites the artist Wilhelm Klotzek (b. 1980, East Berlin) to selectively interact with the exhibition with his own works.

The patron Hasso Plattner has collected paintings with a focus on art from the former GDR  and showed his collection for the first time at the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History in Potsdam in 2012. After individual paintings were exhibited in the group exhibition Hinter der Maske (Behind the Mask) at the Museum Barberini in 2017/18, DAS MINSK is presenting parts of the collection for the first time in a formerly Eastern German modernist building. Works by Gudrun Brüne, Hartwig Ebersbach, Ulrich Hachulla, Bernhard Heisig, Peter Herrmann, Martin Kippenberger, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Harald Metzkes, Stefan Plenkers, Willi Sitte, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Christian Thoelke, Rosemarie Trockel, Werner Tübke, and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, among others, are on view in three exhibition chapters entitled "Das Gerahmte" [The Framed], "Das Gemeine" (meaning both The Common and The Mean), and "Das Gemachte" [The Made].

The exhibition WERK STATT SAMMLUNG is an invitation to the public to engage with these works of art. The artist Wilhelm Klotzek also accepts this invitation to engage in debate. A keen observer, he impartially considers the artistic canon and art industry as well as the treatment of GDR architecture in the installations Kunstbuchhandlung (II) [Art Bookshop II] (2022) and Das architektonische Trio [The Architectural Trio] (2012-16). Klotzek has designed book covers for imaginary publications specifically for this exhibition, which directly refer to works in the collection.

WERK STATT SAMMLUNG focuses on the individual works of art. Here, werkstatt (workshop) is analogous to collection because a collection remains a workshop as long as it is being collected. What does it mean to work as an exhibition house with a collection? In order to do justice to the core tasks of museums—collecting, preserving, exhibiting, but also researching and mediating—half of the exhibition area will be transformed into a workshop. This offers space for encounters, conversations and workshops, for a creative dialogue with the art and also for the presentation of the created results. Already at the opening, collages will be displayed that were created by 83 school children from the Gesamtschule Schilfhof in a workshop with Wilhelm Klotzek and Paola Malavassi.

Further protagonists use the workshop to formulate their own perspectives on art from the GDR and the exhibited works together with the public. Aljoscha Begrich, co-founder and part of the artistic direction of the festival Osten in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, has invited Aron Boks, Hermann Heisig, Martin Maleschka, Henrike Naumann, Christian Thoelke, and Stefan Wartenberg, and Anna Zett, among others. Space is given to perspectives from current research in the OFFENEN WERKSTATT [open workshop] with Kristian Handberg PhD (University of Copenhagen), Dr Elke Neumann, Dr Annabel Ruckdeschel (Universität Gießen), and Professor Dr Kerstin Schankweiler (Technische Universität Dresden).

As part of the ongoing collection format INTERPLAY in DAS MINSK’s cabinet, a painted self-portrait by the Brandenburg-born artist Erika Stürmer-Alex (b. 1938 Wriezen, lives in Lietzen) will be juxtaposed with a so-called grid work from the Surinamese-Dutch artist Remy Jungerman (b.1959 Moengo, Suriname, lives in Amsterdam) parallel to the exhibition WERK STATT SAMMLUNG.

The exhibition is curated by Paola Malavassi.
The interior design of the WERKSTATT was conceived by the artist Wilhelm Klotzek.

Information in Easy Language (German)