Curated by Friedrich Meschede

The Lascaux caves prove wall painting to be civilization’s most durable art form. But in the modern era, which freed art from its ritual context and made it into a circulating commodity, wall painting became an ephemeral medium, as the title of these joint exhibitions suggests. Complicating that premise, the two shows will include newly commissioned temporary wall works by such artists as Arturo Herrera and Karin Sander as well as reconstructions by key practitioners of the medium, such as Lawrence Weiner and Blinky Palermo. The hosting institutions promise both fertile and challenging grounds for a medium married to architecture: Hermann Billing’s Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, with its Neoclassical decorative program illuminated by generous skylights, and Philip Johnson’s Kunsthalle Bielefeld—a gem of International Style museum architecture—with its elegant red sandstone volume housing flexible, freestanding walls.

— Christine Mehring