Abun­dance might not be the first notion that comes to mind when think­ing about the Ger­man art scene. This is mis­lead­ing, how­ever, and espe­cially this year, since the exclu­sive range of major high-end inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion events will occur in their full com­pre­hen­sive­ness with the likes of doc­u­menta 12 in Kas­sel, Sculp­ture Projects Muen­ster 07 and the 52nd Venice Bien­nial. Beyond these, plenty of other annual Ger­man art fairs are also to take place, fur­ther ener­giz­ing the artis­tic landscape.

Made in Ger­many is a dif­fer­ent kind of sur­vey exhi­bi­tion to be launched this sum­mer by three key insti­tu­tions for con­tem­po­rary and mod­ern art in Hanover: the Spren­gel Museum Han­nover, the kest­nerge­sellschaft and the Kun­stverein Han­nover. With more than 50 par­tic­i­pat­ing artists—half of them Ger­man, half of them of inter­na­tional origin—and embody­ing a younger gen­er­a­tion of artists who are largely liv­ing and work­ing in Ger­many, a focus is laid on the cur­rent state of one of the most lively and cre­ative coun­tries in Europe.

In con­trast to the typ­i­cal inter­na­tional bien­ni­als’ approach of gath­er­ing a selec­tion of inter­na­tional artis­tic posi­tions, con­ceived as a dis­cur­sive jux­ta­po­si­tion, and by cre­at­ing a tem­po­rary melt­ing pot, so to speak, Made in Ger­many assesses the con­text of con­tem­po­rary artis­tic pro­duc­tion while tak­ing stock of the highly inter­na­tional nature of the art scene in this coun­try. As the title, Made in Ger­many, con­veys, the exhi­bi­tion cen­ters, first and fore­most, on the loca­tion where the artist has pro­duced the work of art and doesn’t asso­ciate an artwork’s iden­tity solely with an artist’s place of birth or biography.

Spe­cific Ger­man cul­tural poli­cies and fed­eral struc­tures are involved here, which together facil­i­tate and shape Germany’s regional art scenes through the out­stand­ing den­sity, vari­ety and con­ti­nu­ity of art insti­tu­tions, art col­leges and fund­ing schemes in the con­text of this country—be they at the tra­di­tion­ally strong cen­ters of Cologne, Düs­sel­dorf and Munich, or in the con­text of “new­com­ers” like Dres­den or Leipzig. Fur­ther, the intense insti­tu­tional range of muse­ums, Kun­sthallen, Kun­stvere­ine, as well as acad­e­mies have con­tributed to a rise in qual­i­ta­tive artis­tic energy in the greater areas of Ham­burg, Frank­furt and Stuttgart. With­out doubt, the early pres­ence of artist exchange grants such as the renown DAAD (Ger­man Aca­d­e­mic Exchange Ser­vice) in Berlin, and reup­taken, as well as the acad­e­mies with their pro­fes­sor­ships for appointed inter­na­tional artists, have unleashed lively inter­na­tional dis­course on the art scene, which then became an essen­tial com­po­nent in the under­stand­ing of the national art scene.

Cer­tainly, Berlin is cur­rently dom­i­nant in the role of cre­ative think-tank for this coun­try, and this is thanks, in part, to its rebirth as cap­i­tal city and also to its exis­tence as the sec­ond largest city in Europe. On the one hand, there is obvi­ously the appeal of its cleft history—one charged with ref­er­ences and res­o­nances that nour­ish a lib­er­at­ing “undefined-ness” as com­pared to cap­i­tals like New York, Paris or Lon­don. Berlin is a city that is still detectable, how­ever, and one should not neglect its strik­ing inter­sec­tion of urban archi­tec­ture that reminds us of some of the most diverse polit­i­cal visions and pro­jec­tions to date. On the other hand, Berlin has a long­stand­ing record of migra­tion, revived in this lat­est decade by an ini­tial wave of enthu­si­asm over the country’s reunification—more than one third of its 3.4 million-strong mem­bers crossed bor­ders. Since the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many, the city became a mag­net that drew tal­ent from within the coun­try as well as from abroad—the found­ing of new, outward-looking insti­tu­tions such as Kunst­werke in the 90s, the ongo­ing move of major gal­leries to Berlin and the incep­tion, in 1995, of Art Forum Berlin, the new art fair for con­tem­po­rary art, all sup­ported these developments.

Today’s enor­mous sup­ply of artis­tic pro­duc­tion makes it impos­si­ble to iden­tify a gen­eral trend or theme with­out over­sim­pli­fy­ing or reduc­ing the com­plex­ity of this mas­sive dose of artis­tic pro­duc­tion or its points of departure.

Con­se­quently, the cura­tors of Made in Ger­many strictly focus on the qual­ity of each sin­gle work and exam­ine con­tem­po­rary require­ments and art prac­tices with regards to each par­tic­u­lar media. Instal­la­tion, sculp­ture and time-based media pre­vail within the selec­tion and pro­por­tion­ally reflect what was encoun­tered dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. In terms of paint­ing, terms like “neo-representational” and “neo-romantic” may be employed, but the temp­ta­tions of clas­si­fi­ca­tion, such as the so-called Leipziger school, will be avoided.

The par­tic­i­pat­ing artists suc­ceed in expand­ing and alter­ing clas­si­cal media in evolv­ing their own aes­thetic lan­guage. They have no qualms about com­bin­ing images and infor­ma­tion from a broad range of sources and in sit­u­at­ing them within new con­texts. They effort­lessly mix present-day ele­ments with images from a his­tory long since entrenched in our col­lec­tive mem­ory. Addi­tion­ally too, they draw on the rich funds of art his­tory: Mod­ernism, Con­cep­tual art of the 60s and 70s, Min­i­mal and Appro­pri­a­tion art.

Nev­er­the­less, recur­rent themes are also in evi­dence here. Artists are react­ing to devel­op­ments in our soci­ety by con­dens­ing aes­thet­i­cally and, hence, are spot­light­ing depen­dency processes and social struc­tures. In doing this, they sub­mit the expe­ri­ence of the mod­ern age to crit­i­cal reflec­tion and bring about an inter­ro­ga­tion of the rela­tion­ship between pri­vate and pub­lic space while exam­in­ing role pat­terns and their attri­bu­tion. They ques­tion the mech­a­nisms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and are always on the look­out for a good story. Not least of all, how­ever, bio­graph­i­cal back­ground plays a role—there is a def­i­nite con­cern with one’s own iden­tity, with one’s role as an artist and with one’s ori­gins. This exam­i­na­tion is, thus, partly poetic and roman­tic, and it is always personal.