The title Die Bilder tun was mit mir . . . (There is something about these pictures . . .) can be traced back to Frieder Burda and embodies his passion for art and his intuitive approach to assembling his collection. The current exhibition, which presents more than one hundred works, including important recent acquisitions, provides very personal insight into the collection’s development and makeup.

Today, the Frieder Burda Collection contains about 850 works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art and is so multifaceted that it can be appreciated from a wide range of perspectives. Previous exhibitions have focused on Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, and American painting, among others. This time, however, the accent will be placed on the works’ qualities of emotional expression in new, specific dialogue situations. The presentation, which is being curated by the art historian Patricia Kamp in collaboration with the art aficionado Jean-Christophe Ammann, takes risks by boldly relating works in such a way that emphasis is placed on both the qualitative potential of the collection as well as the willingness, so to speak, of the works to respond to one another.
What the two curators have developed is a statement of faith in the ability of the pictures to enter into a dialogue. Yet they first and foremost take up the collector’s vision that there is something about these pictures that not only does something to him, the collector, but that they also do something to each other. The moment the viewer senses that the works relish the company of their neighbors, this energy is transferred to his or her perception as well.
LIGHT AND SPACE INSTALLATIONS
Anton Henning is one of the young artists whose works have a prominent place in the collection. He will be assembling them to create a staged spatial situation specifically for the exhibition. The Bulgarian Nedko Solakov, whose works on paper are part of the collection, will tell a space-pervading story that traverses the museum’s walls. His temporary interventions in the exhibition space are not only amusing, but often thought-provoking. In the installation by the American light artist James Turrell, visitors will enter a room saturated with a mysterious and sublime light that alters one’s perception of surface, color, and space. The intense experience of the light is not only an awareness of the light per se, but poetry as well.
What was also particularly important to the curators was to document the exhibition in an accompanying catalogue in a way that makes it possible for visitors to vividly appreciate the sequence of the works in retrospect. The catalogue will also include an in-depth conversation between Frieder Burda, Patricia Kamp, and Jean-Christophe Ammann. In the conversation, the collector comments on his intuitive approach, which consists in the selection of those works that indeed do something to him.
The exhibition catalogue is being published by Hatje Cantz.
112 pages, numerous illustrations, €16.90.