A final museum visit in the morning.

Students returned to the Neue Nationalgalerie to see the opening of Gerhard Richter’s 100 Works for Berlin. The main work in the exhibition was the series Birkenau (2014), which consisted of four large-format, abstract paintings. Birkenau is the result of Richter’s long and in-depth engagement with the Holocaust and the possibilities of representing it. Alongside the Birkenau series, other works from various phases of Richter’s career were exhibited, including Squatters’ House (1989), 4,900 Colors (2007), and Strip (2013/2016). There were also another large group of works from Richter’s series of overpainted photographs, in which he addresses the tension between photography and painting on a new level.

Also new on display was Tehching Hsieh’s work, One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece). Born in 1950 in Nanzhou, Pingtung, Taiwan, Hsieh became known internationally in the late 1970s and early 1980s primarily for his durational performances, each of which ran over a year. The film and photo installation shows the performance, in which the artist photographed himself punching in on a time clock every hour for a year. The sleep deprivation thus provoked a kind of delirium, causing a number of photographs to fail.