Sam Durant is interested in the relationships between politics, pop culture and art. In his sculptures, drawings and photographs he focuses upon the period around 1968/70 and the shift from utopia to dystopia. One’s first impression of the exhibition is determined by singing and talking voices issuing from loudspeakers: Mick Jagger, Sun Ra, die Rapper Dead Prez, BAP and Joseph Beuys.

A tree keeps cropping up in an installation made of drawings and sculptures—as a symbol of slavery, for the racist justice of the lynch mob in the Deep South, but also for a family tree representing one’s own genealogy. A special installation created especially for the Kunstverein presents selected material in pseudo-scientific manner on the life and work of Joseph Beuys, a kind of critical echo of the mythology surrounding Beuys and his ambivalent attitude towards America.