Artist Alexandra Pirici is set to present Attune – a major new site-specific installation with live performative action – in the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart from 25 April to 6 October 2024. In this work, Pirici invites viewers to recognise the wonder and intelligence of self-structuring matter, both organic and inorganic, and appreciate the reality of our vibrant world. Pirici’s vast, immersive work is the first in a new series of annual commissions to be launched at the start of Gallery Weekend Berlin. The 2024 edition is co-commissioned by Hamburger Bahnhof and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The exhibition is co-funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

With Attune, Alexandra Pirici explores the ways in which humans and non-humans resemble, influence, and attune to one another. Having extensively studied self-organising patterns and processes across all forms of matter, Pirici imbues her work with the knowledge she has acquired from careful observation of the world around her as well as from her reading, experimentation, discourse and collaboration with scientists across various disciplines.
 
Pirici creates a vibrant imaginary landscape within the Historic Hall of Hamburger Bahnhof. She interweaves active sculptural elements with live performance and polyphonic musical pieces of her own choreography and composition. In this at once archaic and futuristic environment, created by the artist and designed together with long-term collaborator Andrei Dinu, chemical reactions, mineral formations, and physical phenomena perform alongside living bodies in acknowledgement and celebration of the continuum between animate and inanimate matter. Together these actors show how stable structures emerge from the random behaviour of atoms, molecules, and cells – in both animate and inanimate matter. A stainless steel vine-like sculpture, a shape-shifting sand dune, a spiralling platform, plants, mineral formations and chemical gardens among other elements bring audiences face to face with the wonder of self-organising processes and patterns. These not only define the experiential world but also offer an insight into the emergence of life and evolution.

This is Pirici’s second collaboration with Audemars Piguet Contemporary, following the programme’s support of Pirici’s Encyclopedia of Relations (2022) at the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale. The new co-commission enables the artist to develop her practice at a larger scale, incorporating fixed physical structures alongside live action.
 
Attune is curated by Catherine Nichols, curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, and is co-commissioned by Hamburger Bahnhof and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Accompanying the exhibition is the fifth edition of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s catalogue series, published by Silvana Editoriale Milano.
 
This exhibition is co-funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.