The collection of Erich Marx is closely bound up with the history of the Hamburger Bahnhof. Following the comprehensive remodelling of the former train station and later railway museum by architect Josef Paul Kleihues and the construction of a large barrel-vaulted gallery to the east, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart opened in 1996 with the Marx Collection. The core of the collection revolves around works by world-famous artists of the second half of the 20th century, such as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol, from whom Erich Marx acquired high quality groups of works. From the 1980s onwards he added new pieces by contemporary artists.
Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein
Voting Booth -
Christoph Büchel, Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy, 2007, Installation, dimensions variable, exhibition view, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2016 ]
The installation raises questions about the running and lawfulness of democratic elections and about access to the ballot. Its siting of a polling station in a dystopian kindergarten is part of an interrogation of political, military, legal and cultural scenarios in American society that the artist has been pursuing for many years. The voting booths in the interior of the container, which is surrounded by fencing and fitted with surveillance cameras, make reference to the US election campaign of 2000, from which George W. Bush emerged as President by a very narrow margin. Suspended amidst the remains of a children’s party on the roof of the container, which is accessible via a ladder, is a leaflet bomb of the kind used to deliver propaganda material as part of psychological warfare. The Christmas decorations call to mind ubiquitous manifestations of hypercapitalism and the ambivalent holiday mood in US military camps.
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