Paul Haas

15. Juni – 25. Juni 2023

Opening: Thursday, June 15, 2023, 7 pm
Opening hours: Wed-Thu 6-8 pm, Fri-Sun 2-6 pm

AusstellungsHalle 1A
Schulstraße 1a
60594 Frankfurt am Main

Pygmalion has many faces – that of an artist who, according to Ovid, falls in love with an ivory statue of his own making after letting his experience with promiscuous women drive him into misogynous isolation; or that of a double agent who, in the GDR film Pygmalion 12 (1971), outsmarts the CIA during the time of the Cold War.

The film directed by Ingrid Sander as well as an interview with her from the same year are the central reference points of the exhibition Who's Pygmalion?. In his cinematic works, Paul Haas appropriates this material as well as other fragments of GDR film history through various forms of alienation. Thus, the DEFA material surrounding Pygmalion 12, which has largely disappeared into oblivion, gains meaning beyond the status of historical documents, and comes to life as an artistic reflection on the production of illusions and longings – longings for a simple division of the world into good and evil and for an engaged filmmaking that defies bourgeois conventions and that, like Ovid's Pygmalion, crosses the boundary between art and life.