Isa Mo­na Li­sa — Con­tem­po­ra­ry art as a mir­ror of the pre­sent

The “Isa Mo­na Li­sa” ex­hi­bi­ti­on at the Ham­bur­ger Kunst­hal­le pres­ents a mul­ti­face­ted pan­ora­ma of in­ter­na­tio­nal con­tem­po­ra­ry art un­til Oc­to­ber 2026. The title of the show is de­ri­ved from a pho­to­graph by Wolf­gang Till­mans, which shows him and the re­now­ned ar­tist Isa Genz­ken — bo­th are re­pre­sen­ted wi­th their own works. Par­ti­cu­lar­ly ex­ci­ting: ar­tist rooms wi­th new ac­qui­si­ti­ons pre­sen­ted for the first time, ico­nic works from the coll­ec­tion and ex­hi­bits from pri­va­te col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons fill the ba­se­ment of the Ga­le­rie der Ge­gen­wart wi­th an ex­tra­or­di­na­ry mix of pain­ting, pho­to­gra­phy, dra­wing and in­stal­la­ti­on.

The list of ar­tists reads li­ke a Who’s Who of con­tem­po­ra­ry art — in­clu­ding Etel Ad­nan, Loui­se Bour­geois, Thors­ten Brink­mann, Dan Lie, Me­la­nie Man­chot, Sig­mar Pol­ke, Ger­hard Rich­ter and ma­ny mo­re. Spe­ci­al­ly or­ga­nis­ed the­med tours of­fer in-depth in­sights, for ex­am­p­le in­to que­er aes­the­tics or cur­rent ar­tis­tic trends. The ex­hi­bi­ti­on thri­ves on ch­an­ge — for con­ser­va­ti­on re­asons, not all works are al­ways on dis­play, which me­ans that every vi­sit opens up new per­spec­ti­ves. Tho­se who en­ga­ge wi­th the au­dio gui­de and the rooms will ex­pe­ri­ence an in­spi­ring jour­ney th­rough the di­ver­si­ty of cur­rent ar­tis­tic po­si­ti­ons.