Clothes make the man: the way we dress and what we wear is how we express ourselves - that's how we are known. Whether couture or home-made, our clothes are sometimes a costuming image campaign, sometimes a striking personal self-expression. Wrapped in these protective layers is the so-called "birthday suit", our natural state with bare skin and bare body. This most intimate and sensitive shell is our very own, a sensitive and secure retreat that we usually only allow very few people to share in selected situations.
When artists decide to work artistically with nudity and even drop the covers themselves, it is usually not out of banal exhibitionism, but because they have recognized the power of the nakedness of skin and use it very consciously. With the exhibition the artist is naked, Kunstpalais is now taking a look for the first time at such unveiled works on the themes of the body, nudity and self-portraits by artists from the 1960s to the present day. With works from the Erlangen Municipal Collection and additional loans, the exhibition brings together famous, celebrated and unique works on nudity in art and opens up exciting dialogues about contemporary events, freedoms fought for and ongoing needs.
With works by:
Eileen Almarales Noy, Kensise Anders, Cassils, John Coplans, Zuzanna Czebatul, Anna Ehrenstein, Valie Export, Zohar Fraiman, Rosie Gibbens, Georg Herold, Claudia Holzinger, Rebecca Horn, Jürgen Klauke, Gerhard Richter, Gustav Seitz, Lars Teichmann, Juergen Teller, Michael Ullrich, Timm Ulrichs, Lilly Urbat, Milena Wojhan, Sonja Yakovleva