„Das ist ja überhaupt alles sehr beweglich.“
Joseph Beuys & Fluxus

23 November 2025–15 February 2026

“It´s really all very fluent.”

Concept, action, music, poetry, language, and science-based approaches instead of traditional panel painting and sculpture: The expanded concept of art of the intermedia Fluxus movement forms the basis of Joseph Beuys' expanded concept of art (“erweiterter Kunstbegriff”). As a supranational network, the Fluxus collective had, from 1962 onwards, dissolved every conventional form of academic and institutional consolidation and placed the recipients at the center as free, self-determined, creative individuals. For Beuys, the early contact with this unorthodox intellectual group meant liberation from the “aesthetic straitjacket,” interdisciplinary communication, and entry into the public, social, and political sphere.

Beuys only became Beuys through Fluxus. In the years 1962–1964, a decisive change took place in the work of the artist, who had previously worked as a sculptor and visual artist: in terms of his choice of media (actions, later multiples), materials, and methods, which also included his offensive approach to the media. In dealing with Fluxus content, Beuys developed his own unique strategy: grasp, appropriate, cooperate, and transform.

The exhibition does not view the artist as a solitary figure, as is so often the case, but places him in an open, collaborative context. Artist friends and colleagues such as Fluxus initiator George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, and the Danish Fluxus connection (Arthur Køpcke, Henning Christiansen) play a special role in this context. 

Within a chronological structure, highlights are set: on the early formative Fluxus years (1962–1964), Beuys' actions with Paik and Christiansen (until 1985), and the student movement era, when the anti-authoritarian, emancipatory Fluxus impulse was reactivated in the environment of the Düsseldorf Art Academy by artists such as Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri, and Dieter Roth (1967–1974).

The project, which brings together archival materials and works, concepts and photographs, audio and video recordings, combines the documentary with the eventful and experimental. 

An accompanying booklet, sponsored by the Anton Betz Foundation of the Rheinische Post e.V., will be published.

Exhibition architecture: Dagmar von der Ahe, Frieda Hünsch, and Luisa Mowitz (Architecture class, Düsseldorf Art Academy) in collaboration with Susanne
Rennert

23 November: Opening performance Missing Questions by Danica Dakić’s class (Film and Video, Düsseldorf Art Academy), inspired by Robert Filliou: Ample Food For Stupid Thought (1965)

Curated by Susanne Rennert 

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