11th September 2025 – 4th January 2026
As a partner of Berlin Art Week 2025, Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL) presents the solo exhibition HERBST by Ruprecht von Kaufmann.
The show was conceived specifically for the exhibition spaces of the art association and consists — save for one exception — exclusively of works created since the end of 2024. In this project, the artist explores the interweaving of current social and political developments with those of the Weimar Republic; 1918 - 1933. The parallels are numerous—and often unsettling. In the 1920s, dissatisfaction with the political system grew; economic disruptions led to ideological radicalization, which escalated into hatred and the persecution of dissenters.
Today, we are once again witnessing a phase of profound upheaval — marked by an unending series of crises at the close of the fossil fuel industrial era. And again, democracy seems to be under threat: by the rise of right-wing populist forces and a growing risk of war in Europe. In light of this, Ruprecht von Kaufmann has chosen Otto Dix (1891–1969) as a key artistic reference to confront the question of how an artist today might visually capture a "society dancing on the edge."
The result is a panopticon of contemporary figures: punks who glare at passersby with disdain; aristocrats entangled in the snares of their family histories; elegantly dressed hipsters who walk indifferently past a sleeping homeless man; rap stars whose obsession with success becomes an impenetrable mask. All of them are children of their time — and yet timeless in their doubts, joys, and longings, which they share with people from a century ago. A distinctive feature of the collaboration between the artist and the art association: Ruprecht von Kaufmann took several years of preparation to develop the exhibition from the ground up, tailoring it precisely to the architectural features of the space. One example is the work Altbau-Idylle (Old Building Idyll), which responds to an architectural element of the late 19th-century building—a bay window. The five panels of the work are tailored to its dimensions and placed in a semicircle in front of the windows. The illusionistically painted pictorial space also features a bay window, in which a drugged couple lies on a mattress.
The exhibition’s titular painting, Herbstabend (Autumn Evening) — its largest work — was created specifically for the wall of the entrance hall. From a steeply angled aerial perspective, we look down into the courtyard of a typical Berlin Altbau, buildings that existed in similar form a century ago. The perspective may even induce a sense of vertigo.
Ruprecht von Kaufmann was born in Munich in 1974 and has lived in Berlin since 2003. HERBST is his first solo exhibition in his chosen home city in ten years.
September 11, 2025
