This film still shows a drawing of a landscape in simple black and white with a mixed creature that has a table lamp for a torso and human legs. There is also writing delicately superimposed over the drawing. William Kentridge, Sammlung Goetz Munich

Sammlung Goetz

Imagination Becomes Reality. Part III: Talking Pictures

February 20 – June 3, 2006

“In Talking Pictures, the third part of my Imagination Becomes Reality series of exhibitions, I would like to present some unashamedly narrative works of artitsts from the collection. Using film or canvas, they confront us with stories or fragments that we can elaborate in our own imaginations. The strong narrative accent in the various works of these artists should nevertheless not prevent us from seeing in them representative views of where painting stands today.“ (Ingvild Goetz)

With Nigel Cooke, Peter Doig, Inka Essenhigh, William Kentridge, Jochen Kuhn, Rosilene Luduvico, Michael Raedecker, Hiroshi Sugito and David Thorpe.

Talking Pictures is not so much about images that actually ‘talk‘ – in the sense of films, videos and soundtracks underscored with monologues, dialogues, texts and language. Instead, it is more about the specific qualities and possibilities of the visual and how the viewer can relate to them. This is a quality derived from the history of painting. As long as painting deployed comprehensible signs, color chords, compositions, moods and motifs, these were universally legible. Today, however, we have to ask ourselves just which visual elements of the media are still universally legible and which are comprehensible only to an open-minded and at the same time highly individualised viewpoint. This exhibition addressed some key issues rooted in the history and function of painting as a means of visual communication and transposed them to the multiplicity of contemporary art production. Talking Pictures explored the issue of how images become ‘talking pictures‘ that convey specific and precise statements to the viewer.

Imagination Becomes Reality
Part III. Talking Pictures

224 pages, 75 ill., hardcover
German/English
2006, Kunstverlag Ingvild Goetz GmbH, Hamburg
ISBN 3-9808063-7-5
€ 15,00

learn more

Imagination Becomes Reality
(Special limited slipcase edition)

On the occasion of the exhibition at the ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, a limited special edition has been published in a slipcase. It comprises all five exhibition catalogues of the exhibition cycle Imagination Becomes Reality, shown in the Munich rooms of the Sammlung Goetz, the sixth catalogue of the Karlsruhe exhibition, and a graphic work specially produced and signed for this edition.

Available graphic works (312 KB)

learn more

Artist editions

André Butzer

Ohne Titel
2006
Woodcut
23,5 x 16,5 cm
Limited edition of 77

learn more

Thomas Helbig

Wilder
2006
Lithograph/etching
23,5 x 16,5 cm
Limited edition of 77

learn more

Markus Selg

Die Expedition
2006
Digital print
23,5 x 16,5 cm
Limited edition of 77

learn more

Tal R

Inn
2006
Etching
23,5 x 16,5 cm
Limited edition of 77

learn more

Veron Urdarianu

Die Rückkehr des Verlangens
2006
Litograph
23,5 x 16,5 cm
Limited edition of 77

learn more

Cyrill Lachauer. The Sunset Route

June 20 – September 27, 2026 | Kunstpalais Erlangen

feat. Mike Brodie, Mouse Green, Rhyw, Mia Justice Smith, Moritz Stumm

In the exhibition The Sunset Route, on view at the Kunstpalais Erlangen and created in collaboration with the Sammlung Goetz, Cyrill Lachauer presents works from 2020 to 2025, a period during which he traveled on freight trains through the USA, Mexico, and Bosnia. In the spirit of poetic ethnography, he created photographs and films that are now being shown together for the first time. They all explore questions of freedom, self-determination, and resistance, as well as colonization, exclusion, and exploitation.

Laurie Simmons. Dollhouse Photographs

June 25 – August 30, 2026 | Deutsches Theatermuseum

The American artist Laurie Simmons is known for her photographs featuring tiny dolls representing stereotypical female roles in domestic interiors. Her series In and Around the House (1978/79) is exemplary for this set-up photography. The series is the centerpiece of the exhibition, with 56 black-and-white images showing a doll occupied with the mundane chores of a housewife in the cozy environment of a dollhouse. The exhibition “Laurie Simmons: Dollhouse Photographs”, a collaboration of Sammlung Goetz, Deutsches Theatermuseum and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, presents a selection of works by Simmons that cast a critical gaze at gender stereotypes in the American middle class.

Sterling Ruby

July 16 – October 24, 2026 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

Los Angeles-based American artist Sterling Ruby is known for his cross-genre work, which ranges from ceramics and bronzes, collages and textiles, to enormous, spray-painted paintings. In his works, Ruby weaves together a variety of different autobiographical, art-historical, and sociological sources. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, he probes the idea of a non-hierarchical and borderless universe. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster provides insight into his multi-layered artistic practice.

Jeff Wall

November 17, 2026 – February 20, 2027 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

Canadian artist Jeff Wall is one of the most influential photographers of our time. In his elaborately staged pictorial compositions, he combines the narrative of cinema with painting. Wall became known for his large-format lightbox images, which are formally more reminiscent of the world of advertising than that of fine art. With this technique, he revolutionized the medium of photography, elevating it to the height of painting and sculpture. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster presents a selection of his iconic lightbox images from the 1990s.