Minimal Cinema: Charlotte Posenenske, Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, Agnes Martin

In resonance with the exhibition Minimal, films by artists featured in the exhibition – Charlotte Posenenske, Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, and Agnes Martin – will be screened at the Auditorium during the Friday late-night openings.

The series opens with Monotony ist schön (1968) by German artist Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985). Filmed in the Netherlands from a moving car, the landscape appears monotonous: a steady rhythm unfolds between water, fields, and trees. This embrace of “monotony” reflects the artist’s work, where regularity and repetition run through her creative process.

The program continues with a screening dedicated to American artist Richard Serra (1938–2024). His early videos, made from 1968 onwards, feature short, action-based performances: a hand trying to catch pieces of lead in midair, or two bound hands freeing themselves from a rope. The session concludes with Boomerang (1974), a video in which artist Nancy Holt, wearing headphones, describes in real time the unsettling experience of hearing her own words with a one-second delay.

In the 1970s, American artist Nancy Holt (1938–2014) created a series of experimental video works exploring perception, memory, and the relationship to landscape. The four films presented here document her time in Utah — where she lived with artist Robert Smithson and installed her landmark land art piece Sun Tunnels (1976) — as well as her investigations into framing and point of view.

The series continues with a looped screening of the rarely shown Hard Core (1969), a groundbreaking experimental film by American artist Walter De Maria (1935-2013). Shot in July 1969 in the arid Black Rock Desert of Nevada, the film immerses the viewer in a real-time experience of the landscape.

The program concludes with a special screening of Gabriel (1976), the only completed film by American artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004), shown in Paris for the first time. Filmed in New Mexico, it follows a young boy standing by the sea, walking through a forest, and climbing a mountain — a contemplative, fragmentary study of landscape, vision, and the perception of nature.