William Kentridge
Apron 

Starting June 27, the sculpture Apron, 2024, by South African artist William Kentridge will be open to the public on the terraces of the Brauhausberg. As a symbol of the importance of interpersonal communication, collaborative effort, and artistic exchange, the sculpture serves as a new link in the visual axis between DAS MINSK, the Brauhausberg, and the city center.

The bronze sculpture Apron belongs to a series by the artist William Kentridge (born 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa) entitled Glyph. The works in this series emerge from artistic examinations of language, meaning, and the ambiguities of communication. They depict everyday objects like a typewriter, a coffee pot, or a pair of scissors, which the artist combines with forms of animals, birds, or human figures. These expressive hybrid beings reveal the artist’s engagement with avant-garde movements from the early 20th century like Dada and Surrealism, particularly in his affinity for the illogical and dark humor.

In Apron, an aproned figure is caught mid-stride carrying an oversized megaphone in place of an upper body and head. As a sign of communication, the megaphone is a recurring symbol in Kentridge's work, in which engagement with protest culture, the striving for justice, and reconciliation are central. In his artistic practice, William Kentridge succeeds in addressing both the themes of post-apartheid South Africa and universal human questions with nuance, poignancy, and poetry.

Apron reaches into the urban space

With the sculpture Apron, DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam sends an important signal in public space and brings together global and local visual cultural history. As a symbol of interpersonal communication, collective endeavor, and artistic exchange, the sculpture appears as a new link in the visual axis between DAS MINSK, the Brauhausberg, and Potsdam’s city center.

Apron enters into dialogue with works by Wolfgang Mattheuer, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, and Robin Rhode that are already installed outdoors, marking an important new element in the artistic experience of DAS MINSK’s exterior spaces.

DAS MINSK sees itself as a place where art reexamines the history and stories of this city, with a particular focus on the GDR, post-socialist contexts, and global perspectives. The placement of the sculpture in the direct vicinity of the museum is an expansion of our exhibition practice: the institution moves beyond its walls into urban space and therefore into an open social dialogue.

A public art project by the Hasso Plattner Foundation in cooperation with DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam.