Productive unrest

The 1980s were also an eventful and turbulent time in Dresden, full of contradictions, disputes and new beginnings. What forms of expression were able to assert themselves and what new relationships emerged between art and the public on this side and beyond state control? The exhibition "Productive Unrest" takes a look at selected positions in art, photography and alternative culture from this period as a resonance chamber for emerging social changes. The starting point is the IX. and X. The starting point is the IXth and Xth Art Exhibition, the largest and most visited survey exhibition in the GDR, which already reflected the diversity of artistic activity at the time, but also selected positions of an alternative culture that at this time was already seeking and finding its own paths beyond the state-controlled channels. The jointly developed exhibition offers insights into this special time, mainly on the basis of the graphic collection holdings of the Centre for Art Exhibitions of the GDR (ZfK), which were transferred to the ifa - Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in 1991 after the dissolution of the ZfK. In the same year, the Kunsthaus Dresden was established as the successor to the former Dresden branch of the ZfK and today's municipal gallery for contemporary art.

Several new artistic productions open up the dialogue between the generations in this exhibition with works and loans from a total of more than 50 artists - in some cases also in confrontation with their own family biographies.

The exploratory look at the audience of that time, its interaction with art then and now, and the historical documentary material interweave perspectives of the present and the past and build a bridge to the people and the atmosphere of the 1980s in a country in turmoil.

With works by

Karl-Heinz Adler, Walter Arnold, Bernd Bankroth, Falko Behrendt, Sibylle Bergemann, Christian Borchert, Anna Bromley, Klaus Dennhardt, Reinhard Dietrich, Michael Freudenberg, Freunde der italienischen Oper, Manuel Frolik, Manuel Frolik, Hubertus Giebe, Hermann Glöckner, Dieter Goltzsche, Eberhard Göschel, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, Herta Günther, Angela Hampel, Andreas Hegewald, Christian Heinze, Christine Heitmann, Ernst Hirsch / Gartenfest Heinz Wittig, Olaf Holzapfel, Wilhelm Klotzek, Friedrich Kracht, Sylvie Kürsten, Gerda Lepke, Werner Lieberknecht, Peter Makolies, Martin Maleschka, Yana Milev, Henrike Naumann, Helga Paris, A. R. Penck, Johannes Peschel, David Polzin, Núria Quevedo, Günther Rechn, Gerhard Rommel, Jürgen Schieferdecker, Hanns Schimansky, Werner Schinko, Luise Schröder, Klaus Schwabe, Sabine Slatosch, Wolfgang Smy, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Ulrich Tarlatt, Alfred Thiele, Max Uhlig, Norbert Wagenbrett, Suse Weber, Claus Weidensdorfer, Horst Weisse, Olav Westphalen, Leoni Wirth, Karla Woisnitza, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Willy Wolff, Ulrich Wüst, Fotis Zaprasis

With an artistic contemporary witness project by Sylvie Kürsten with Susanne Altmann, Michael Freudenberg, Hubertus Giebe, Prof. Dr Bernd Lindner, Yana Milev, Peter Segor, Sabine Slatosch

An exhibition and a programme of events by the Kunsthaus Dresden and the ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation. Further partners: Kunstfonds / Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and Art in Networks - a research project of the Chair of Visual Studies and Art History at TU Dresden.

Supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, the Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen, the Stiftung Kunst & Musik für Dresden and the Homann-Stiftung.