Curated by Gabriele Knapstein, Petra Lange-Berndt, and Dietmar Rübel

A room covered by Hanne Darboven’s Konstruktionen of 1968 can be a numbing experience, with row after row of framed sheets of graph paper conveying delicately drafted numbers and letters. Studied more closely, though, the works become intimate, even moving. Unlike her Minimalist pals, Darboven was never taken by the elimination of subjectivity. With her striking, idiosyncratic handwriting, Darboven literally draws attention to herself, as if to propose that subjectivity inheres in art whether Darboven wants it to or not. In particular, the old postcards and miscellanea that she increasingly incorporated onto the sheets trigger a wide range of associations—some personal, some political. What might seem clinical and conceptual can actually be highly emotional. At the Hamburger Bahnhof, the contextualization with other works from the collection, including those of Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, and the Bechers, promises to unveil Darboven’s covert humanization of the Minimalist credo. 

— Benjamin Paul