Overture
Graduate Exhibition: 16. Juli – 10. August 2025
Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10 am–6 pm; Thursday, 10am–9 pm
Opening: Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 7–10 pm
Entrance via Holbeinstraße, opposite building number 8.
With a performance program by the students.
Under the title Overture, 30 graduates present their final exhibition at the Städel Museum. After up to five years of studies in Fine Arts, the exhibition marks not (only) the end of their study time, but presents also a prelude to what is yet to come. Overture points towards the horizon of artistic practice, and the process of developing and rediscovering one’s own approach to art and its relevance, again and again.
The students’ works offer insights into current artistic discourses, and yet, they grapple with timeless themes, which they bring into their own present and world: the politics and aesthetics of everyday life; the relentless circulation of images; the fluidity of identity; affects such as desire, vulnerability and longing; the traces of history and time; the limits of language and communication; the artificiality of our relationship with nature and the conditions of production – also in relation to one’s own position. The students’ media and practices are as rich as their themes: film, video and sound meet installation and sculpture, painting and collage, as well as conceptual and performative interventions.
The artists are Mariia Andreeva, Charlotte Berg, Linus Berg, Sam Cottington, Arnaud Ferron, Samuel Georgy, Tomás Loureiro Gonçalo, Anima Goyal, Giulia Guidi, Aerin Hong, Gašper Kunšič, Gregor Lau, raúl itamar lima, Salome Lübke, Fuki Matsumoto, Rosa Nitzsche, Vincenzo Ottino, Deshaun Price, Emmilou Roessling, Killa Schuetze, Juri Simoncini & Elisa Diaferia, Elsa Stanyer, Nicholas Stewens, Mahmoud Tarek, Siyu Tian, Vera Varlamova, Xtina Vargas, Punch Viratmalee and Ming Yuan.
From the classes of Monika Baer, Gerard Byrne, Judith Hopf, Hassan Khan, Tobias Rehberger, Willem de Rooij and Haegue Yang.
Curated by Johanna Laub.
Graduate Prizes
As part of the exhibition, a jury of experts awarded prizes to the graduates for the best final projects:
Arnaud Ferron, class of Haegue Yang
Prize by the Städelschule Portikus e.V. and the Stiftung Städelschule für junge Künstler
Anima Goyal, class of Willem de Rooij
Prize by the Plastischen Chirurgie Frankfurt | Hochtaunus
Nicholas Stewens, class of Judith Hopf
Prize by the Sammlung Pohl
In addition, scholarships were awarded to the following graduates thanks to the Heinz and Gisela Friederichs Stiftung:
Elisa Diaferia & Juri Simoncini, class of Haegue Yang
Samuel Georgy, class of Hassan Khan
Gregor Lau, class of Monika Baer
Killa Schuetze, class of Tobias Rehberger
Vera Varlamova, class of Judith Hopf
Catalog
A catalog produced by the graduates is published to accompany the exhibition and is available free of charge. It contains individual contributions by the students, providing insights into their works, research and ideas. The catalog also includes an essay by guest professor Ghislaine Leung and further contributions by professors.
Program and guided tours
Opening: Tuesday, July 15, 7–10 pm
Entrance opposite of Holbeinstraße 8, 60596 Frankfurt a.M.
7 pm Opening Speeches & Prize Ceremony
Opening speeches by Barbara Clausen, Rector of Städelschule and Philipp Demandt, Director of Städel Museum, followed by the award ceremony of the graduate prizes. In the garden of the museum.
8:30 pm Sam Cottington, Monicka .Play
Exhibition space, duration 15 min.
A ghost haunts the Städel Museum. What they want to say is unclear, perhaps because a ghost might speak differently to a living person. In so much of the literature where they are present, the voices of ghosts function as a device to move the plot, under an assumption that their primary compulsion is to communicate with the living. Monicka imagines their motivation to language differently, as an echoic loop of displaced interiorities. These voices converge as something other than a will to return or to communicate with the living. Instead, it’s more like necromantic futurism, an erotic friction of flickering non-being, continuity without reproduction.
9:15 pm Emmilou Roessling, Schemes of an Hour
Garden of Städel Museum, duration 25 min.
A choreography for the liminal time of dusk and its peculiar affective ambiguity.
Choreography: Emmilou Roessling; composition and live violin: Julia Yoo Soon Gröning; performance: Hanako Hayakawa; original cast: Rachell Bo Clark, Amanda Barrio Charmelo & Hanako Hayakawa; dramaturgy & research: Lucas Eigel. With musical quotes by Julius Eastman.
Made possible through the support of the Ottilie-Roederstein-Stipend from the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Arts and Culture, the production funding from the Fonds Darstellende Künste, the travel grant of the Hans and Stefan Bernbeck Stiftung, Jean-Claude Maier Gallery Frankfurt am Main and the generous support of Städelschule Portikus e.V. With special thanks to Zimmerli of Switzerland und Ensemble Quillo for sponsoring parts of the costume and musical equipment.
From 11 pm Graduate Party
Daimlerstraße 32, 60314 Frankfurt am Main
Finissage: Sunday, August 10, Städel Museum, 2–5 pm
Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt a.M.
2:15 pm Punch Viratmalee, Alte Meister—Heute
Meeting point: Ticket register, duration 30 min.
“I’m afraid I don’t make much sense today— but I’ve been thinking about the idea of Today. Today that could also be every day. One day (or even one hour) that is the culmination of many days if the condition is not dissimilar. The capital day of days. The only day that makes sense; then the number of days doesn’t matter. The goal is to create a day that is suspended, like the cloud that never passed by, dispersed, or accumulated further.
I welcome you all to have that day with me.”
The artist will guide the audience through her performance route in the Städel Museum collection and read an edited excerpt from her publication Alte Meister (in English).
3 pm Guided Tour in German
Meeting point: Entrance area of exhibition space, duration 60 min.
4 pm Anima Goyal, Compartmentalization of an ill body
Meeting point: Entrance area of exhibition space, duration 20 min.
When new wounds are
inflicted at later times, multiple
columns of defect develop.
A companion reading to the video work titled Gudiyaan that focuses on the artist’s ongoing research on chronic illness, through the slow decay in the body of old dolls and a beech tree.
4:30 pm Vera Varlamova, Painting Fish
Exhibition space (Rotunda), duration 15 min.
Her shameless indulgence in the sin of pictorial representation in public, accompanied by a life rendition of Bach’s aria Widerstehe doch der Sünde.
Guided Tours
In cooperation with the Master’s program Curatorial Studies, public tours are offered on Sundays at 3 pm in German and on Thursdays at 7 pm in English. The meeting point is in the entrance area of the exhibition.
Private tours of the exhibition can be organized upon request via kunstkoordination@staedelschule.de.
Audio description of the exhibition: Saturday, August 9, 3 pm
Meeting point: Ticket register, duration 60 min.
The Städelschule offers an audio description of the graduate show for blind and visually impaired visitors in a guided tour with Lilian Korner and Emmilou Roessling. The tour is conducted in German spoken language. The number of participants is limited; blind and visually impaired people have priority. Please register via audiodeskription@staedelschule.de.
Supporters
Overture is made possible by major support from the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture; Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP and the Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung. We thank the Städelschule Portikus e.V., the Stiftung Städelschule für junge Künstler, the Sammlung Pohl gGmbH, Plastische Chirurgie Frankfurt | Hochtaunus and the Heinz und Gisela Friederichs Stiftung for the donation of graduate prizes and stipends.