Thomas Demand is known for his photographs of rooms made from paper or cardboard. He usually finds his motifs in the media or in everyday situations. In a painstaking manual process, he constructs a life-size model, which he destroys once he has photographed it. Demand also often embeds his photographs in specially conceived spatial settings. His work Fels (Rock), for example, consists of wallpaper that transforms the exhibition space into a kind of cave. The motif recalls the dwellings of early humans. At the same time, it evokes storage sites for valuable goods such as seeds, microfilms or even works of art intended to be preserved for a future humanity.

Ulla von Brandenburg’s expansive installation consists of seven rows, each comprising two floor-to-ceiling curtains in differrent colours. Using cords, ladders and fishing rods, the artist has arranged the fabrics so that they fall in folds and evoke a theatrical stage. The work invites visitors to move slowly and attentively through the installation.

Anton Henning combines classical genres of painting such as still life, the nude and landscape with various periods of art history. He thus creates his own collection, which he presents in a kind of reception room: a salon of the kind common in the 19th century. Henning’s Interieurs are theatrical domestic spaces that visitors can enter, furnished not only with his own paintings, but also with furniture and wall paintings of his own design – in this case, a lamp, a Biedermeier sofa and a sculptural table painted by the artist himself.

From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, Polke uses unusual materials in his works and drawy on motifs from the world of fashion – such as an advertisement for polyester fibres. As an expression of his resistance to the conventions of middle-class society and the art world, he stretches curtain fabric over an unsanded stretcher frame or lets liquid paint drip onto a polyester flokati rug.

As part of the collaborative project Sigmar Polke: Athanor Now, initiated by the Anna Polke Founda-tion, this presentation marks the fortieth anniversary of Polke’s contribution to the Venice Biennale in 1986, for which he was awarded a Golden Lion.

Gonzalez-Foerster’s work builds on the tradition of panoramas: cultur­al figures from the 20th and 21st centuries gather before views of Berlin. Alongside images of the coronavirus and distant galax­ies, she also quotes visual elements from female abstract paint­ers such as Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner, who were long neglected by art history.

Artist and architect Tomás Saraceno has worked with international research institutions for more than twenty years, bringing together insights from biology, physics, space research and engineering in his practice. For Stillness in Motion, he has suspended a web-like network of ropes across the room, with mirrored geometric bodies floating within it. Visitors can move mindfully through the installation, which opens up new perspectives with every step.

Hito Steyerl is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists. Her reflections on media theory have provided important impetus for current debates, while her work offers a critical examination of ongoing technological advance and the power structures that shape contemporary society. The installation Animal Spirits evokes a mysterious, alien planet or a cave-like environment. Projections of cave paintings adorn the walls, while illuminated glass vessels containing plants hang from the ceiling like celestial bodies. Nature and technology merge into a dense field of sensory impressions, composed of rhythmic sounds and animal imagery.