Harald Falckenberg

Harald Falckenberg, born in 1943, is an attorney who began buying art in the 1990s. Following an increasingly international trend, the Falckenberg collection has gradually broadened and progressed from its concentration on Californian and German artists of recent years, to encompass works by the up-and-coming generation. Within a decade, the number of individual acquisitions has risen to more than 1600.

The increasing size of the collection made the search for a home mandatory. In 1996 the works were housed in an historic building near Hamburg’s airport, which was converted, step by step, in collaboration with artists. It became a functioning art warehouse with presentation facilities, which fully represented the intentions of the collector: he did not want to create a museum, but a kind of ‘artistic workshop’, a place that would be flexible to change and the debate surrounding ideas driving contemporary art. In 2001, due to the extension of the airport, the building became scheduled for demolition and the search for a home for the collection started anew. A fortuitous agreement was reached with the former Phoenix-Werke in the district of Harburg, on the other side of the river Elbe. They granted use of their large and disused production halls (with a floor area of about 5,000 square metres), which now serve as an exhibition and storage space for the collection.

For Falckenberg, collecting is a reflexive process, including mistakes and errors. The artists represented in Falckenberg´s collection achieve the expression in the maingling of art and life by real experience of the heterogenous. As a collector of recent, nonconformist art and as a critical observer of both the contemporary art scene and art market, Falckenberg concentrates on artists such as Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Gilbert & George, and John Baldessari, as well as new names such as Nicole Eisenmann, Manuel Ocampo, Dirk Skreber, Albert Oehlen, John Bock and Ena Swansea. According to Falckenberg, art should be ‘subversive, grotesque, playful,’ but also ‘socio-politically infiltrative and poetic’. He once said: ‘My aim is to protect this particular aspect of art and communicate it to the visitor.’ Falckenberg sees the works as a whole, which, beyond the subjective view inherent in any collection, also raises the question of an interpretation of art today. He explained: ‘Traditional concepts of the fine arts are a means of reconciliation with the reality of an unsatisfactory life, or in the case of political art, as utopia and promise. But art can also attempt to concern itself quite simply with what is quite separate from any ideologies and questions of meaning. I tend towards this position; deconstruction and scatter art are intrinsic elements of our daily life, or at least they are an important part of our consumer-oriented society.’

Hence, Falckenberg is not interested in aesthetic standards, but in anti-authoritarian elements and in pushing boundaries, and he is quite prepared to offer his premises as a site for works that are provocative, even to the point of destruction. Martin Kippenberger is particularly well represented (many of his works in the collection are currently on show in the Kippenberger exhibition at the Tate Modern in London). Albert Oehlen’s paintings expose the failure of art and revel in self-styled retardation. For him the canvas is a rudimentary plan and by denying conventional modes of critique, Oehlen questions how the value and function of painting might be developed outside of historical aesthetics and form. Falckenberg also owns works such as What Has Come Out of Here Can Only Be Seen Over There (2002) by Manuel Ocampo, who was born in the Philippines and makes religious and inter-cultural paintings that confront the viewer with moral dilemmas. He is also a staunch supporter of the young German artist Jonathan Meese. In installations in the collection such as, Meese creates an encompassing world of photos, 70s posters, objects, writings and massive details suggestive of a religion or cult, which are fuelled by historical events as well as the artist’s own life, and which reflect an unbridled joy in playing and a pleasure in incorrectness. These extraordinary works are scheduled to be shown from April to September 2006 at Deichtorhallen (museum for photography and contemporary art) in Hamburg.

Falckenberg not only considers it his mission to display his own collection, but also artworks not belonging to him. At the Phoenix-Hallen, he has presented Öyvind Fahlström, Arthur Köpcke, Hanne Darboven and Klaus Staeck. In 2006 there will be shows by the artists Peter Weibel and Paul Thek. The factory space of the Phoenix Kulturstiftung is also available as a forum for private collections and in 2007 the collections of Wilhelm Schürmann and Anton and Annick Herbert will be exhibited here. The current presentation is entitled ‘Goetz meets Falckenberg’, showing works from Falckenberg’s own collection alongside those of Ingvild Goetz of Munich. Harald Falckenberg is considered an established name on the international artistic scene, and certainly the scope and ambition of his collection ranks him among the leading international art collectors.


2006 Contemporary Magazine, London