Past exhibitions

From July 8 to November 27, 2022

The group exhibition "Schmunzeln - von heiter bis absurd" in the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle Rastatt, deals with the moment of absurdity and merriment in art production and contemplation. All works are connected by a humorous basic attitude and a moment of winking in the approach. The exhibition focuses on aspects such as pictorial humor, deception, and theatricality, as well as on the interplay between work and title or the relationship between image and writing. The works do not pursue the intention of being funny, but can be read that way. The exhibition takes place in cooperation with the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe (HfG) and is sponsored by SV Versicherung and LBBW.

Participating artists*:
Francis Alÿs, Chaos Comic Club, Toninho Dingl, Sophie Innmann, Lisa Mühleisen, Jochen Mühlenbrink, Karo Kucher, Patricia Paryz, Jonas Maria Ried, Timm Ulrichs, Super Vivaz: Lina Baltruweit and Johannes Breuninger, Johanna Wagner, Georg Weißbach, André Wendland.

The exhibition is complemented by contributions from students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Karlsruhe, an international collection of jokes and works from the Westermann Collection.

From July 8 to September 18, 2022

The steel sculptor Rüdiger Seidt (*1965 in Forbach in the Black Forest / lives and works there) uses a constructive-concrete canon of forms for the production of his steel sculptures. His works captivate through precision and their spatial effect, which is also fed by the interplay of local environment and surface texture. In a cabinet exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle, Seidt now presents a compact and representative overview of his thirty years of work.

From December 11, 2021 to May 5, 2022

During the renovation-related closure period, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle presents graphic holdings and contemporary art in the Stadtmuseum. The collection of the Rastatt Gallery is largely based on the Lütze print collection, and the monumental collage by Anselm Kiefer, the most valuable work in the museum, is also made up of figurative woodcuts.

The guest show Grafik! Grafik! at the Stadtmuseum Rastatt focuses on this identity-forming emphasis. On display are drawings, etchings, woodcuts and linocuts, i.e. a wide range of graphic art. Accompanying the exhibits, the printing techniques are also explained and original printing plates are presented. The City Museum is also showing reed pen drawings by Karl Hubbuch, which were created in the years 1944-46. They show views of Favorite Palace, Pagodenburg Castle, and Rastatt Residence Palace.

In addition to the works from the collections of both museums, a room-sized installation and other works by Karlsruhe artist Peco Kawashima (*1979 in Kyoto, Japan/ lives and works in Karlsruhe) will be on display. The works of the 2021 Hanna Nagel Prize winner, all made of paper, enter into a relationship with the graphic collections and thus link the focus on "Art in Baden after 1945" with the present.

From May 1 to October 3, 2021

The basis for the exhibition project On the Quiet is a package. It is the simplest and cheapest solution to send something material worldwide, even in times of a pandemic. For On the Quiet, such a package is filled with art. Everything needed for the exhibition is included in it. The works are then supplemented - by elements already present in the respective museum - such as pedestals, screens, wall paint or the labor of the staff. The largest standard package with a maximum of 31.5 kg forms the framework within which the participating artists* move. The exhibition travels around the world in silence, with a small ecological footprint: from the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, where the project was first shown, to the Kunsthalle Mannheim, now to the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle in Rastatt and then to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, then on to China, Mexico or South Africa.

Curated by Carolina Pérez Pallares/ Benjamin Appel/Sebastian Schmitt

Participating artists: Jamika Ajalon/ Benjamin Appel/ Art n More: Paul Bowler and Georg Weißbach/ Silvia Bächli/ Ernst Caramelle/ Eric Hattan/ Schirin Kretschmann/ Carolina Pérez Pallares/ Marion Porten/ Thomas Rentmeister/ Manuela Ribadeneira/ Tilo Schulz/ Maya Schweizer

From May 1 to October 3, 2021

Lucia Mattes (*1996 in Heidelberg / lives and works in Karlsruhe) deals in her works with phenomena of popular and everyday culture. She translates and comments on them with the help of traditional artistic techniques into a haptic, often soft form. For her work on the ramp in the Fruchthalle, she deals with meme culture on the Internet. She has felted tapestries in small-scale handwork that deal with the phenomenon of cat videos as a viral success story on the Internet and aphorisms as supposed words of wisdom. The exhibition on the ramp in the Fruchthalle also includes the intervention in the Kiefer cabinet. Mattes will let an oversized chain of fabric hang down from the parapet and thus address the situation between monumental collage and museum on several levels. On the one hand, the relationship between the work and the spatial situation will be addressed, as well as the process of the museumization of the work itself. In addition, the chain of soft material is also a tongue-in-cheek examination of the oath of allegiance of eternal commitment expressed by the locks on bridge railings.

From February 8 to October 18, 2020

In the current Fruchthallen show, painter and sculptor Gerhard Neumaier serves up culinary delights by placing paintings of dishes on giant plates as if they were real meals. Intuitively created in the process of painting, the paintings consequently depict "painting times" in which fictional meals are imagined in an abstract way and painted in oil. While Daniel Spoerri with his EAT-Art since the 1970s presents the things around food as a representation in a montage itself, Gerhard Neumaier opens with his art a new painterly quality of representation and serves in MALZEIT culinary as a quasi edible abstraction.

From August 3, 2019 to January 26, 2020

Painting and sculpture, surface and space, color and structure, line and form are the themes of this synopsis of works, some of them large-scale, by Basel painter Andreas Durrer and sculptor Armin Göhringer. The line in its equally abstract and concrete movement and the materiality of the color spaces and wooden blocks play a weighty role, as do Durrer's lyrical abstractions and Göhringer's ashlar masses held over filigree webs. In addition, the 32 acrylic paintings and the 27 wooden sculptures on view in the exhibition actually cultivate a tangible use of weights.

From March to July 21, 2019

On the occasion of his 70th birthday this year, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle is showing a large survey of the work of Ralf Cohen, a Solingen-born photo artist who lives in Karlsruhe and works exclusively in analog. The exhibition features series and cycles by the artist from over 40 years of involvement with the medium of photography - from the initial portrait shots of well-known personalities, such as Walter Scheel, to Cohen's fictional images of imaginary islands or the "Neuland" series, in which large-format prints are once again subjected to heavy processing and the influence of nature. It becomes clear how versatile Ralf Cohen knows how to exploit the photographic possibilities in the analog recording and printing technique.

From October 2018 to March 10, 2019

The artist, who was born in Hüfingen in the Black Forest and lives in Freiburg, initially studied textile design at the Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences and art history at the University of Freiburg, but then switched to the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, where she attended the painting class of Prof. Peter Dreher from 1975 to 1980. That Eva Rosenstiel comes from Peter Dreher's school is particularly evident in the oil painting from the series "Marché" shown on the gallery's ramp turn. The materiality of the painting medium corresponds here in a plastic way with the fabrics of the piles of clothes that the artist discovered at a Paris market and first photographed and then realized in painting, partly against photographic backgrounds that show the market place itself and its daily changing setups. In the process, the painting experiences an almost magical realism that allows the textile material to step out of the surface, as it were.

From February 17 to September 30, 2018

On June 19, 1993, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle opened its doors for the first time and has since presented a total of 90 exhibitions with over 250 artists. The anniversary exhibition marking the institution's 25th anniversary will feature selected pieces from the Rastatt Collection, which now consists of more than 1,000 works of art in the fields of sculpture, painting, graphics and drawing.

From September 2017 to January 28, 2018

The exhibition shows the painterly and graphic work of Nino Malfatti in an extensive, selected choice of 110 exhibits. Born in Innsbruck in 1940 and now living in Berlin, the artist studied at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe from 1967 to 1972. Nino Malfatti is already represented in the Rastatt Collection with an early painting and a drawing from the period after his studies. In these works from the 1970s, which can be seen alongside other early works, a staircase banister is set as a constructive composition on the monochrome canvas in a purposeless and perspectival staggering, and clothespins drawn in pencil in a serial sequence and differentiated black and white hue become the set piece of an equally constructive arrangement. In the fine gradation of color tones and the condensed layering, spatial structures emerge that unite aspects of realism and constructivism.

From June 10 to September 17, 2017

In memory of the Pforzheim artist Ulrike Michaelis, who died in 2015, had studied at the Karlsruhe Art Academy with Harry Kögler and is represented in the Rastatt Collection with two works... The current exhibition in the Fruchthalle illustrates some decisive developmental phases in the artist's life. In it, she artistically combines intuitive abstraction and composition with figurative ciphers of femininity. In her pictorial program she increasingly resorts to sign-like body fragments and vessel emblems in which expressive gestures of feeling become visible. In doing so, she develops a subtle feeling for color, which is mostly realized in a two-dimensional-constructive way in counterpoint to the figurative elements.

From February 2 to May 28, 2017

In cooperation with the Herbert Weisenburger Foundation, the exhibition presents a selection from the extensive oeuvre of the photo artist, who comes from Worms and lives in Mannheim. In her works, she deliberately subverts conventional expectations of the medium of "photography". Her color photographs show peripheral situations from different positions, sometimes out of focus or from a great distance, such as seen through a window pane.

From October 8, 2016 to January 22, 2017

The draftsman, graphic artist and painter Karl Hubbuch (1891-1979) is one of the outstanding and internationally renowned representatives of New Objectivity, Verism and post-war Expressionism. His studies in Karlsruhe and Berlin had already been interrupted by the First World War, but the Nazi regime and the Second World War interrupted his professorship at the Karlsruhe Art Academy, where he eventually taught again until 1957. As a person and artist, the Karlsruhe native, who died in his hometown in 1979, drew the consequence from the social catastrophes of the 20th century to stand up for social balance and world peace throughout his life. He was particularly concerned with reconciliation with his western neighbor France, whose country and people he appreciated, and which he therefore also captured in his pictures on numerous trips.

He was connected with Rastatt not only by his second wife Ellen, but also by his brief activity as a city councilor and his activities in the Antifa movement after World War II. During this time, he created numerous drawings of the baroque and war-torn Rastatt.

From April 30 to September 25, 2016

Since 1991, the steel sculpture "L'incontro (The Encounter)" by the Italian sculptor Giuliano Vangi has stood in Faneser Platz in Rastatt. On the occasion of the artist's 85th birthday and the 30-year town twinning Fano-Rastatt, the Fruchthalle Municipal Gallery is showing recent works from the last 15 years. The exhibition includes 30 sculptures and sculptures made of different materials: bronze, nickel, marble, granite, wood, ivory. Sometimes Vangi mixes different materials in one object, thus increasing the degree of vivacity of the sitter, with the figurines additionally implanted with glass eyes and denture prostheses. In the largest work in the exhibition, the sculpture "Veio," which is twelve meters long, Vangi even uses a motorcycle, a "Triumph Tiger," to enhance authenticity. In two life-size painted sculptures made of alder and linden wood, the artist also shows his mastery of traditional carving techniques.

From January 21 to April 17, 2016

The spring exhibition 2016 of the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle presents the work of Susanne Zetzmann in a comprehensive exhibition. Born in Bremen and resident in Baden-Baden for over 15 years, the artist, who studied textile design at the Stuttgart Art Academy in the 1970s, offers insight into her diverse oeuvre in the retrospective show. In over 40 years of freelance work, she has changed her "style" several times, experimentally altering and expanding her means of artistic expression. The spectrum ranges from gestural colorfulness, whose abstraction contains both figurative and narrative elements, to a phase in which she worked monochrome and constructively, to sculptural objects, some of which take on the character of assemblages and installations.

From September 24, 2015 to January 10, 2016

This year's fall exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle, entitled "TRANS-FORM," illustrates the transformation in contemporary art and painting by presenting cross-generationally diverse artistic personalities and their works and relating them to one another in a specially arranged staging parcours.

From May 14 to September 13, 2015

In cooperation with the Herbert Weisenburger Foundation, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle is showing a retrospective selection of the painterly work of Manfred Garstka, who comes from East Prussia and now lives in the Odenwald, in its summer presentation and in conjunction with works from the Rastatt Collection. The show offers an exemplary view of the artist's work genesis and spans an arc from his works of the 1950s to his current oeuvre. It becomes apparent that Manfred Garstka's individual work phases are based on the respective current of the time, such as Pop Art and New Figuration, as well as on outstanding individual artists such as Francis Bacon, Matta, or Hans Bellmer, but that he always retains his very own style. The overview of his work also makes it clear that his formal language, which intersperses its purely abstract imaginings throughout with corporeal, surreal set pieces, has increased in expressivity and pictorial dynamics in the course of its development.

From February 5 to May 3, 2015

The spring exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle illustrates the supra-regional influence of Baden art. After twelve years of teaching, the Freiburg painter and former master student of Peter Dreher, Ralph Fleck, ended his professorship at the Nuremberg Art Academy in the summer of 2014. Widely known for his impasto paintings, the artist understood how to pass on to his students both his craftsmanship experience and skills in handling oil paint, as well as the indestructible appeal of the panel painting.

From October 16, 2014 to January 25, 2015

Under the motto FIT IN COLOR, chromatic abstractions from the past ten years by Freiburg painter Ben Hübsch are on display. With 56 works, the artist, direct descendant of the Karlsruhe architect Heinrich Hübsch, master student of Prof. Peter Dreher at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and professor of fine arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Design und populäre Musik in Freiburg, presents a selection of virtuoso color sounds, which in their immanent movement and energetic version are comparable to tonal compositions in music.

From May 15 to October 5, 2014

The Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle Rastatt takes up the theme of the decade in an overview. In more than 50 exhibits from the collection holdings, the exhibition presents a broad spectrum of artistic assertions of the kind described above, in which it becomes clear that the tendency toward individualization forms a countercurrent to the egalitarian uniformity of the emerging globalization. The artists on display include such notables as Alfonso Hüppi, Lothar Quinte, Wolf Pehlke, Armin Göhringer, Sabine Funke, Stephan Balkenhol, Renate Koch, Vera Röhm, AGNESS, Hildegard Fuhrer, Karl Heinz Bux, Johanna Helbling-Felix, and many others.

From February 1 to May 4, 2014

In its spring exhibition, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle Rastatt will be showing current works by Karlsruhe-based artist Agnes Märkel, who studied at the Karlsruhe Art Academy under Horst Egon Kalinowski and has already received numerous awards. The large-format works on paper on display bring two media into dialogue with each other, photography and pastel, are thus bimedial. The beginning of each picture idea is a complex arrangement of photographs, which are distributed over the picture surface and are expanded and reinterpreted through the pastel drawing. The photographic elements are embedded as sections of reality, as a picture within a picture, in the sometimes fantastic scenarios. In contrast to the usual collage, however, the photographs are neither cropped nor overdrawn by the pastel, but are optically interwoven with the drawing in such a way that the two media are indistinguishable at first glance. The rough surface of the hand drawing and the smoothness of the digital print merge into a lively now and alternately "cross borders," which is also the title of the exhibition.

From October 3, 2013 to January 19, 2014

In its fall exhibition, the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle Rastatt presents a retrospective of the painter Hildegard Fuhrer with paintings from the years 1967 to 2013. Born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, the artist studied at the Academy of Karlsruhe with Prof. Albrecht von Hancke and art history at the University of Karlsruhe. The exhibition is symbolically under the sign of the butterfly, because within the more than 40 years of development of the painting of Hildegard Fuhrer essential, pictorial-genetic transformation steps are shown, which can be metaphorically equated with the changeful and miraculous metamorphosis of the butterfly. Just as the butterfly changes from egg to larva and from chrysalis to butterfly, in Hildegard Fuhrer's work developmental, symbolic and emblematic changes of motifs of a comparable kind occur both in the pictorial themes and in the use of painting media.

From May 18 to September 22, 2013

In the twenty years since the founding of the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle, which first opened its doors on June 18, 1993, there has been continuous exhibition activity. In addition to numerous thematically weighted portfolio exhibitions, well over 100 artists, particularly from the southwest region, have been shown in solo and group exhibitions. In connection with the exhibition program, the Rastatt Collection has been successively expanded and, together with the objects of the Westermann Collection, now comprises around 1,000 works of art. Over the past two decades, more than 130,000 visitors have found their way to the gallery.

From January 31 to May 5, 2013

In its spring exhibition "VorOrt - Achtfach", the Städtische Galerie Fruchthalle presents a show with works by eight artists who live in Rastatt and the surrounding area. The exhibition takes a look at the artistic creative field of the baroque city and places it in the context of art in Baden after 1945, not claiming to draw a complete picture of the existing potential and all artistic positions active in the place. The selection is limited to those who have not yet exhibited in the Fruchthalle. Their number is as determined as arbitrary. Although Heidrun Dautner, Albert Kiefer, Gerd Nöldner, Gina Plunder, Klaus Ruschmann, Paul Sachse, Henning Schwarz and Ralf Taller live and work on site, most of them did not know each other until now. Their meeting in the context of the exhibition took place in a mixture of chance and selection process.

From September 14, 2012 to January 13, 2013

With Rolf-Gunter Dienst, a solo exhibition on the occasion of his 70th birthday pays tribute to an artistic personality who for 50 years has set and still sets standards beyond the region with his works and his singular position in both art-critical and art-making effectiveness. It is no coincidence that the exhibition bears the title "I'll just keep on", as this expresses the continuing desire for artistic production that continues to drive the artist, as well as the serial creative process that runs through his entire oeuvre

From May 17 to September 2, 2012

Carlos Granger represents an important position of non-representational sculpture after 1945, and in the 1960s he was one of the artists who, in the environment of the legendary London St. Martin's School of Art, realized sculptures in a novel way with contemporary industrial materials in a reduced, primarily linear formal language. From 1973 to 1982 he interrupted his sculptural activity and turned to the photography of still lifes and landscapes, before he found within a few years to the concise, yet precisely elaborated form of sculpture, which still characterizes his work today.

From February 3 to May 6, 2012

The English verb "to frame," which has many, sometimes contradictory meanings - to formulate, to form, to frame someone - forms the bracket, the connecting element that ties together and relates the different groups of works shown in the exhibition. These are exhibits that require a second look. Nothing is revealed in passing. For example, the portraits from the work cycle "The Hitler Project" are for the most part montages in which the body parts of various models are joined together to form a new whole. In this context, the concept of the "banality of evil" coined by Hannah Arendt gains a new virulence.