Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin | The Blogazine

Martin Kippenberger: Sehr Gut | Very Good

On February 25th this year, the iconic artist Martin Kippenberger would have turned 60 years old. That said, if the multi-talented enfant terrible of German art wouldn’t have died way too early at the age of 44, following a life of too much too fast. For the first time in Berlin, the National Gallery in Hamburger Bahnhof, the German mothership of contemporary art, is now honoring Kippenberger with a large retrospective. 300 of his works – paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters, books, music and photographs – are on view in Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good, arranged as an approach to Kippenberger as a person and artist rather than a chronological retrospective.

Kippenberger was a painter, actor, writer, musician, drinker, dancer, traveller, charmer – an ‘exhibitionist’ in his own words, and his life cannot be separated from his work. During the few years he spent in West Berlin, from 1978 until 1981, he set up Kippenberger’s Office together with Gisela Capitain, where he exhibited his own or his friends’ works and offered a whole range of other art-related services. Later he became the business director of the punk, new wave and visual art venue SO36 in Kreuzberg, and even started his own punk band. In the legendary Paris Bar in Charlottenburg, where the German and international crème de la crème of artists, actors, musicians and other heavyweights were hanging out back then (and to some extent still do), Kippenberger traded his paintings for a life long provision of food and drinks.

Martin Kippenberger: sehr gut | very good at Hamburger Bahnhof is an ambitious attempt to show every side of this multi-faceted artist, as well as his private and public person. In one of the side rooms, the seldom exhibited so called “white pictures” are on view; fusing irony, concept and avant-garde rhetoric into transparent, glossy writing similar to school reports stating “sehr gut/very good”. Refusing to adapt to one single style, Kippenberger’s enormous variety of artistic output still feels rebellious, but sometimes also slightly confusing. The widespread exhibition takes a while to get through, but is worth every turn. Be prepared to get surprised: there is a very small chance that you will be able predict what will be on view in the next room.