Düsseldorf. The Kunstsammlung NRW is giving the artist Lars Eidinger a big stage. He shows once again how broken our world is.
Lars Eidinger does not want to be photographed. This has less to do with airs and graces than with his own reticence. Almost shyly, his gaze wanders over the assembled cultural journalists who are critically eyeing his first monographic exhibition in the Kunstsammlung NRW. Eidinger wears black Crocs and a hoodie with his slightly disheveled hair and it almost seems as if he does not want to attract attention at any cost.
It is about his photographs, but above all about those who look at them. The exhibition is called “O Man” in reference to Nietzsche’s famous poem, and just like the famous philosopher, Eidinger is concerned with self-knowledge and the connection to the subconscious. “I don’t want to teach or proselytize or explain the world, but rather encourage people to ask who they are,” says Eidinger.
Eidinger took most of the approximately 100 pictures with his “phone”
Lars Eidinger shows “O Mensch” at K21 in Düsseldorf
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © DPA Images | Federico Gambarini
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © epd | Hans-Juergen Bauer
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © DPA Images | Federico Gambarini
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © DPA Images | Federico Gambarini
Lars Eidinger’s paintings can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © DPA Images | Federico Gambarini
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
Lars Eidinger’s pictures can be seen in the Kunstsammlung NRW until January 26. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
“O Man” at K21 in Düsseldorf
Lars Eidinger’s exhibition opens on Friday, August 30th, at 7 p.m. and can then be seen until January 26th. After the exhibition opening, Eidinger and DJ Hell will be playing a rave at K21. Admission is free.
Students and schoolchildren are invited to a sneak preview from 4 p.m. to talk to the artist. A book signing with Lars Eidinger will take place on Saturday, August 31, from 2 to 3 p.m.
Lars Eidinger was born in Berlin in 1976 and is considered one of the most important German actors (White Noise, Mackie Messer – Brecht’s Threepenny Film) in both the cinema and on the stage. He is a member of the ensemble of the Berlin Schaubühne and also regularly performs as a DJ.
Eidinger took most of the 100 or so pictures and videos on display with his “phone”. He avoids the term smartphone because, in his eyes, it is just as smart as social networks are social. In protest, he has since deleted his Instagram channel, where his pictures were first seen. Nevertheless, the cell phone offers a huge advantage: since he usually has it with him, Eidinger doesn’t look for subjects, he finds them.
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A distant Mickey Mouse mascot on Lake Geneva. The imprint of a lighter on the bare back of a sleeping person. A deflated rubber doll, carelessly thrown in the trash like the orange peels it lies on. A man who almost disappears into the cell phone he is looking at. Eidiniger shows the world and its people as they are. Usually overwhelmed, frequently contradictory, rarely beautiful.
The images are complemented by three-line verses in the form of Japanese haiku by the Berlin-based poet Yoko Tawada. “In the bar she drank vodka orange alone,” she writes about the discarded sex toy. She writes about the photo of an apparently closed discotheque: “Distant years have faded away, when you danced without an audience.”
Kunstsammlung NRW wants to show art with a critical contemporary reference
A flood of images like on Instagram, only more sustainable: Eidinger dissects everyday scenes and holds up a mirror to the viewer. © FUNKE Foto Services | Kai Kitschenberg
There is a tender sadness about Eidinger’s pictures, most of which he took between 2018 and 2024. A period in which a lot has happened and social upheavals are becoming increasingly clear. “A dark time in which Eidinger’s pictures convey the dystopian state of daily life,” as Susanne Gaensheimer, director of the Kunstsammlung NRW, describes it. They have cleared the bel étage for Lars Eidinger in the K21, where “art with a critical reference to the times” has often been shown, as Gaensheimer calls it. She attests to Eidinger’s “great empathy and a dissecting sense of reality,” as well as a “sincere awareness of his own fragility.”
At K21, the stage is not set for the photographer or actor Lars Eidinger, but for the artist. As with the photos, much of the exhibition preparation was created in the moment, says curator Doris Krystof. The photos are not professional and, apart from a few black and white shots, have not been edited or cropped. It is this pure gaze that makes Eidinger’s pictures so worth seeing.
