The kestnergesellschaft presents Helmut Lang — Alles Gleich Schwer, the first institutional solo exhibition of artistic work by Helmut Lang, one of the most prominent and influential cultural figures of our time. Lang's most recent body of work marks the logical conclusion to a constantly rearranging equation. Turning away from the physical body and its social articulation through clothes, Lang has created a series of objects that address the intersection of public and private experience as it is recorded through mythologies both personal and shared.

"The continuity is that I'm expressing what's important to me with the appropriate form, content and context through different mediums and other dimensions." HL

Throughout the institution, new works that explore and develop the social and physical membranes between interior and exterior identities and spaces will be exhibited. Drawing on references as diverse as the folkloric rites of maypole ceremonies and the exploration of surrogate skin, Lang has created a series of installations, objects and possibilities that integrate an intimate knowledge of the human form with the personal mythologies and abstract arrangements of the world at large. Originally conceived for Louise Bourgeois / Jenny Holzer / Helmut Lang (Kunsthalle Wien, 1998), Séance de Travail 1993–1999 combines elements of reflection and projection to confront the viewer with an image of protean identity constantly reformed in the space where individual desire plays out against a background of societal norms. Helmut Lang works in New York and Long Island.

A catalogue will accompany the exhibition with texts by Veit Gorner, Jenny Holzer, Frank-Thorsten Moll, Ulf Poschardt, Alice Rawsthorn, Gisela Vetter-Liebenow, Neville Wakefield and Christian Wulff.

Curated by Frank Thorsten Moll and Neville Wakefield