Curated by Devrim Bayar

On the heels of Thomas Bayrle’s revelatory contribution to Documenta 13, this comprehensive retrospective promises further insight into the trajectory and topicality of the influential German artist’s oeuvre. Fusing Minimalist tactics with visual idioms culled from agitprop and popular culture, Bayrle typically works in the mode of so-called super-forms, dystopian portraits of postwar subjectivity derived from the obsessive repetition and modulation of a single pixel-like motif. The exhibition, organized by theme rather than chronology, will present an array of paintings, drawings, prints, and films made since the mid-1960s, as well as two of the artist’s new kinetic sculptures based on car engines. An accompanying catalogue contains essays by Bayar and critic Jörg Heiser, along with never-before-published writings from the artist’s archive.

— André Rottmann