This work by Chris Ofili consists of a pencil drawing that represents a loop of mirror-symmetrical, concentric circles.

Sammlung Goetz

The Mystery of Painting

October 29, 2001 – April 5, 2002

Today, painting distinguishes itself by stylistic diversity, visual pleasure and its own intrinsic logic. For the group exhibition The Mystery of Painting, Sammlung Goetz has selected ten positions from its holdings of paintings.

With Ellen Gallagher, Toba Khedoori, Karen Kilimnik, Udomsak Krisanamis, Sarah Morris, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Lari Pittman, Neo Rauch and Matthew Ritchie.

Painting has often been declared dead. Despite this, it has maintained its vitality and diversity over the centuries as hardly any other medium. The ten artists in the group exhibition The Mystery of Painting are not related by a common style, but by a common attitude to painting. "What they have in common is that they do not paint a picture of the world, but about the world", explains Ingvild Goetz. They masterfully transcend traditional categories of 'representational' and 'abstract', look for points of departure in pop culture and folk art and do not shy away from close proximity to the decorative or to kitsch. Most of these artists belong to the younger generation. Their works were created in the late 1990s. Many of them are being shown in Germany for the first time.

The Mystery of Painting

192 pages, 91 ill., hardcover
German/English
2001, Kunstverlag Ingvild Goetz GmbH, Hamburg
ISBN 3-9805267-9-8
€ 15,00

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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.