Hund ist extra, Alexanderplatz U2, 1993, Foto: Hucky Porzner
60 years Art in the Underground
In the early years after 1958, the production of posters for the underground station walls behind the tracks was regulated by the East German state. Subsequent shifts both in subject matter and style attest artists’ endeavors to gradually transform the U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz from a platform for propaganda into one for artistic positions on socially relevant issues. In 1991 the working group “Kunst statt Werbung“ [Art instead of Advertising] was founded. In 1993 the nGbK realized the group exhibition “Hund ist extra” in the U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz. Until 2008 the annual exhibition and art actions were shown both behind the tracks and on the central platform of the U2 underground line.
Once the BVG [transport authority] sold all its underground station billboards to a advertising company, the Alexanderplatz platform was lost to art and artists. The competition duly changed: exhibition areas were sought now throughout the entire underground network—and no longer solely underground—while the permissible project format was broadened to encompass art of a more strongly conceptual or interventionist nature.
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Find an overview of all nGbK projects within Kunst im Untergrund [Art in the Underground] in our online archive [...]
Financed by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa – Kunst im Stadtraum
Supported by BVG and LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin