really? Gülbin ÜnlüWinner of the Zeitsicht Art Award 2024
26.07.-02.11.2025 at Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst im Glaspalast | H1
Munich artist Gülbin Ünlü is the winner of the Augsburg "Zeitsicht Art Award" 2024, which will be presented to her at the opening of her solo exhibition "really?" at the Centre for contemporary Art. She will be showing works from her current production, some of which are new and were created especially for the exhibition. Ünlü's artistic practice refuses to be unrepresentative, as does aesthetic self-assurance. Her works are created between media - painting, photography, video, sound, digital print, language, space. In this way, she realises pictorial bodies that are composed of fragments and generated from breaks, repetitions, surface shifts, so-called mash-ups. There is often a moment of disruption in this - visually and structurally - but never as a mere effect.
The exhibition title ‘really?’ also functions less as a theme than as a semantic disruptive impulse: a single word whose meaning shifts depending on the tone of voice - approving, sarcastic, exhausted or angry. This ambiguity is central to Ünlü's artistic thinking, which explores shifts in context and surplus meaning. Her works appear situational, never loud, sometimes political, but without being programmatic. What appears decorative can be a trace or a break. Concepts such as origin, normality or representation do not appear as motifs, but as structural forces - visible, for example, in folds, symmetries or empty spaces. Really? thus becomes a point of interference between work and context - open to ambivalence, irony, mistrust and a brief smile of doubt.
GÜLBIN ÜNLÜ
studied painting, drawing, sculpture and performance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 2024, she was interim head of the painting and graphics class there - formerly under the professorship of Markus Oehlen. For her multifaceted work, the Turkish-German artist was honoured with the City of Munich Sponsorship Award in 2022 and the Kunstfonds Foundation Scholarship and the Bavarian Art Sponsorship Award in 2023. Her works were shown at venues including the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2020, the Berlinische Galerie in 2022 and the Villa Stuck and Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2025.
We cordially invite you to the opening and award ceremony on Friday, 25 July 2025, at 6 pm at the Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst.
PRODUCTION PROCESS
Alle Wege führen nach Home, 2025, ink, oil on fabric, 760 x 1.200 cm
The large-scale installation Alle Wege führen nach Home is the largest work in the exhibition ‘really?’ and was conceived by Gülbin Ünlü specifically for Hall 1 at the Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst (Centre for Contemporary Art). It is also the most extensive textile collection Ünlü has created to date.
On display is Ünlü’s archive material, which brings together private and public works. In a labour-intensive process, Ünlü’s paintings on canvas were joined together in metre-long panels with various other textiles – ranging from shimmering, transparent chiffon to opaque muslin – by two seamstresses. In interaction with visitors, the diaphanous fabrics create fleeting movements that open up the space in its entirety, both horizontally and vertically. Fixed at several points, the work—measuring over seven by twelve metres—floats in the hall and merges completely with the space; one of the pillars that decisively shape the hall’s architectural structure was even sewn into the installation by the artist as an integral part of it. The result is a seemingly fragile structure that floats yet remains firmly connected to its surroundings. The form is reminiscent of a sail or the hull of a ship, gliding seemingly weightlessly through the space. In its spatial extension, it creates the impression of a wave that has been halted in the moment of its flow and now remains in the space as a sculptural gesture.
The installation was preceded by extensive planning, during which Ünlü selected, amongst other things, many works that had already been on display in 2021 as a walk-through floor installation ‘Untitled’ at the Kunstpavillon München, where they established a connection to the history of the historic building dating back to the Nazi era. Through a new arrangement of some of the fragments of this work, alongside further elements from Ünlü’s ‘memory archive’, diverse cross-connections emerge between images from different times and contexts, which are embedded within their historical setting. Hall 1, a former cotton spinning and weaving mill, has thus been revitalised and honoured as a site of textile work – with a work in which temporality is just as significant as immediate presence. (Klara Reidel, M.A., research assistant and co-curator of the exhibition)
ZEITSICHT ART AWARD
The ‘Zeitsicht Art Award’ was launched over 20 years ago as a private initiative by Eberhard Hauser and Martin Hagen from the Augsburg-based consultancy hauserconsulting. Previously, the nomination was usually given to a prominent person from the international art world. Major artists such as Marina Abramovic, Arnulf Rainer, Rebecca Horn, Neo Rauch and Katharina Sieverding have since become personally involved in the award.
In 2024, a new direction will be taken: the ‘Zeitsicht Art Award’ will become a municipal responsibility. Through an agreement between Eberhard Hauser, the long-standing cooperation partner of the Augsburg art collections and museums, the competition will be transferred to and organised by the city. Not only the municipal sponsorship of the ‘Zeitsicht Art Award’ is new, but also the procedure: For the first time, an expert jury decided on the award in September 2024.
2024 “Zeitsicht Art Award” Jury:
Norbert Kiening, Chair of the BBK Schwaben Nord and Augsburg
Matthias Mühling, Director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Christine Müller-Horn, Director of the City of Kempten Museums
Christof Trepesch, Executive Director of the Augsburg Art Collections and Museums
Jan T. Wilms, Director of Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren (currently Director of Kunsthalle Augsburg im Glaspalast)
Josef Zankl, Sculptor, Augsburg
and in an advisory capacity:
Jürgen K. Enninger, Advisor for Culture, World Heritage, and Sports for the City of Augsburg
Eberhard Hauser, hauserconsulting, Founder of the “Zeitsicht Art Award”
In addition to prize money totalling EUR 7,000, the winners will be invited to present their artistic work as part of a solo exhibition in Augsburg. The realisation of the exhibition is also generously sponsored by hauserconsulting as part of the ‘Zeitsicht Art Award’.
In addition to the ‘Augsburg Peace Prize’ (politics) and the ‘Bertolt Brecht Prize’ (literature), the ‘Zeitsicht Art Award’ gives the city of Augsburg a third nationally recognised prize in the field of contemporary visual arts.