Gerd Rohling. The Light of the World

The Georg Kolbe Museum is dedicating a major solo exhibition to the Berlin artist Gerd Rohling in 2027. Rohling’s large-scale installations, objects, and public interventions—often created from urban found objects—link observations of urban society with visions of a global community. The exhibition features three key installations that bring Rohling’s radical material aesthetics and his exploration of the boundaries between art and life into the exhibition spaces in a theatrical manner. His work is characterized by subtle irony and a humanistic outlook.

Gerd Rohling (born in 1946 in Krefeld) is a painter and object artist. He lives and works in Berlin. From 1971 to 1977, he studied graphic design under Gerhart Bergmann and painting under Karl Horst Hödicke at the Berlin University of the Arts, eventually becoming Hödicke’s master student.  In 1979, he was a founding member of the Berlin artists’ group and the self-help gallery of the same name, “1/61” (named after the Berlin-Kreuzberg 61 postal district).

Rohling has been awarded numerous fellowships and prizes: In 1980, he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in Florence. In 1981, he received the PS1 Fellowship in New York. This was followed in the same year by a working scholarship from the Cultural Circle of the Federation of German Industries; in 1982, he received the Encouragement Award from the Kunstfonds in Bonn; and from 1982 to 1984, he held the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship. In 1990, Rohling received the Will Grohmann Prize, awarded by the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

His works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, including at the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art in Bremen, the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the 49th Venice Biennale, the MAM in Rio de Janeiro, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and the Dom Quartier in Salzburg. In 2027, Rohling’s works will be exhibited at the Biennale in Montevideo.

 

Curated by Dr. Elisa Tamaschke

 

The opening will take place on April 9, 2027, at 6:00 pm.