For the annual commission project at Haus der Kunst, the New York–based artist Maria VMier (b. 1985 in Passau, Germany) examines the relationship between individuals and memory, architecture and materiality. The artist proposes an attentive vision of working site-specifically, one that uncovers latent stories and invites new perspective for learning and unlearning.
Through conversations with staff members at Haus der Kunst, VMier collected stories, routines, and observations, which revealed personal and collective connections to the building, some shaped over a few years, others over decades. The resulting three-part installation is conceived as a journey into the immanent life of an art institution, particularly those parts that remain invisible and inaccessible to the public—in effect exploring the institution from within.
The first installation is situated at the staff entrance at the rear of the building. The weathered metal letters that once stood on the façade of the building (2012–2020) have been reassembled indoors in a new configuration. Retired from representing the identity of Haus der Kunst, they emerge as a playful and poetic phrase: “Bauch der Kunst” (the belly of the art). The work rests against the walls of a passageway used daily by staff members and delivery workers, thereby underlining an essential part of an art institution: the people who sustain the space and bring artists’ works to public view.
Two large drawing installations make up the central body of the project, located in the Passage, a new space for solo projects, adjacent to the auditorium and formerly part of the historic Südgalerie. The dense marking on paper is based on rubbings taken from surfaces of the building—from entrance halls to corridors. The works thus register the building as a tactile archive, with the layered compositions transposing architectural textures onto a field of marks and movement. Unfolding as a bodily and temporal encounter, the installations respond to the symmetry of the space by extending across the Passage. For VMier, the practice of drawing becomes a way of revealing the solid stone materials, and reimagining the institution as a site of accumulated traces, gestures, and material memory.
A new series of small cast aluminium sculptures is inserted into the existing openings in the marble pillars and wall surfaces of Mittelhalle and the entrance areas. The works are inspired by the ammonite fossils embedded within the Saalburg marble—a material chosen to project grandeur in a hall historically used for National Socialist propaganda in the 1930s. Emerging from corners and crevices, the sculptures appear as ghostly forms suspended between facial forms and organic growth. These subtle eruptions of resistance introduce other presences inside the monumental interior, unsettling its architectural and historical authority from within. Extending this attention to overlooked architectural details, an artist book produced together with VMier’s long-term collaborator The New York Board of Taste documents the openings and crevices identified by the artist around the public space, and will be on view and available at Walther König's bookstore at Haus der Kunst.
Since 2021, Haus der Kunst has commissioned site-specific works by artists for the staff entrance and beyond.
The initiative was launched during the pandemic to offer the team a moment of inspiration as they entered the building each day, while also supporting artists from Munich and the surrounding region at an important stage in their artistic development. Since then, annual site-specific projects have been realized by Cyrill Lachauer, Jan Erbelding, Paul Valentin, Luisa Baldhuber, and Gülbin Ünlü.
Curated by Xue Tan
The commission project by Maria VMier is generously supported by Sabine and Thomas Bachmaier.
Artist info
Maria VMier
Maria VMier (b. 1985, Passau, Germany) is an artist based in New York, USA and Munich, Germany. Painting lies at the core of Maria VMier’s practice, evolving from writing gestures and intricate, idiosyncratic mark-making into complex formations that remain in continual motion. For VMier, painting is not only a site of embodiment or expression, but also a practice of research, experience, and (un) learning. VMier’s wider practice encompasses context-specific and community-oriented work, as well as installations, artist books, and objects. Central to Maria VMier’s work is the body as a tool of knowledge — a site of political struggle and joy. Recurring themes include the conditions of artistic labour, dynamics of power and desire, institutions as malleable structures, and an engagement with nature, the invisible, and the unknown.
VMier studied painting and sculpture at Bard College, the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. They’ve had prominent presentations at MoMA PS1, Museum Brandhorst, and Pinakothek der Moderne (all 2024), amongst others. As their practice is grounded in community and collaboration, they regularly invite further artists into their work, they run the artists’ book publisher Hammann von Mier-Verlag with Stefanie Hammann, and are also part of the collective Ruine München with Leo Heinik and Jan Erbelding.