Giants of German culture including Thomas Demand to feature in Fondazione Prada’s Venice Biennale show

Giants of German culture including Thomas Demand to feature in Fondazione Prada’s Venice Biennale showThe Fondazione Prada will bring together three major figures from the German cultural scene—the photographer Thomas Demand, the stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock and the film-maker Alexander Kluge—for an exhibition in its Venetian venue, Ca’Corner della Regina. Udo Kittelmann, the director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, will organise the show, titled The Boat is Leaking, the Captain Lied (13 May-26 November), which coincides with the 57th Venice Biennale.

The exhibition will include photographs, installations and films on display across the three floors of the 18th-century palazzo, presenting “a dialogue of polyphonic references and constellations between the contributions of each artist”, the organisers say.

Kittelmann says in a statement that the collaboration between the three came about through a “shared awareness, both on an emotional and theoretical level, of the critical aspects of present times and the complexity of the world we live in”.

A permanent installation by Demand—a recreation of a rock chamber called Processo Grottesco (2015)—is on show at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Kluge is a pioneer of New German Cinema while Viebrock has designed opera sets for the Salzburg Festival and the San Francisco Opera.