Opening

The Kestner Gesellschaft is pleased to open Richard Hawkins’s solo exhibition Potentialities on Thursday, April 23, 2026, at 7 pm.

The internationally renowned, Los Angeles–based artist has developed a unique practice since the early 1990s, which he himself describes as “a combination of historical research and boyish obsessions.” Collage—the bringing together of disparate elements—serves as the starting point for his paintings, AI-generated and -manipulated videos, glazed ceramic reliefs, and sculptures.

Potentialities, his first institutional exhibition in over a decade in Germany, takes up all the exhibition halls of the Kestner Gesellschaft. The exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of Hawkins’s work, featuring approximetaly 100 paintings, collages, sculptures, and videos across nine bodies of work created over the past twenty years. The works combine art-historical references with elements of pop culture and explore questions of desire and artistic obsession in complex compositions, with references ranging from Pierre Bonnard and Forrest Bess to Japanese Butoh dance theater and Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty.

The exhibition in Hanover is curated by Eva Birkenstock and organized in close collaboration with Kunsthalle Wien.

It is accompanied by the release of the publication Richard Hawkins: Potentialities, edited by Eva Birkenstock and Michelle Cotton, with texts by Rhea Anastas and Kristian Vistrup Madsen, and an interview between Richard Hawkins and Bruce Hainley. The book is published in German and English by Walther und Franz König, Cologne (designed by Dan Solbach, price: 38 Euro).

Richard Hawkins has created a limited edition print as part of a new series of artists’ editions. Mystery Cult of Harpocrates (Hannover Version) 2026 reproduces the 2018 painting Mystery Cult of Harpocrates included in the exhibition.

Program
3 pm Kids' Vernissage Geisterhaus & Körperzauber (Haunted House & Body Magic)
for families with kids ages 3 and up as our earliest guests

7 pm Welcome
Heidelinde Gerhold, Chairwoman, Kestner Gesellschaft
Corinna Fischer, Head of the Department of Culture at the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture
Eva Birkenstock, Director of the Kestner Gesellschaft and Curator of the exhibition

8.30 pm Exhibition tour
with Gabriele Sand, Art Educator

DJ Heatsick will provide a new DJ set throughout the opening evening, while the Broncos Bar offers drinks for all, and Teranga Kitchen serves a selection of tapas.