About the project

Michaela Melián
Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg, 2025
Steel, paper, 360 x 260 x 2 cm

The photo shows the finished installation, a 3.60 x 2.60 m brown-gray steel plate, in front of the Kunsthalle Nürnberg.
 

Michaela Melián’s artwork Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg forms part of her research-based works that engage with the politics of memory with respect to national-socialism and antisemitism. These were the topic of her exhibition Der Dritte Raum at Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft. Melián’s sculpture is a tribute to the Jewish artist Gustav Metzger, born in 1926 in Nuremberg. To save him from national-socialist persecution, his parents sent him to England in January 1939 on one of the Kindertransporte. Several years after his death in 2017, he is now acknowledged as one of the most influential personalities in the arts of his generation.

The starting point for Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg is Metzger’s own piece Historic Photographs: Hitler-Youth, Eingeschweißt. Metzger produced this work for his first institutional solo show in Germany in 1997. For this purpose, he had a print of a historical press photograph, taken on the 10th of September 1938 at the NSDAP Party Congress in Nuremberg, sealed in between two sheets of steel that obstructed it from view. The image chosen by Metzger shows a Hitler Youth rally in the Nuremberg stadium: Numerous adolescents who would at the time have been of the same age as the artist himself. The 1997 exhibition at Kunstraum München marks the beginning of the rediscovery of Gustav Metzger in Germany. His series Historic Photographs thematised the limits of the capacity to transmit and comprehend historical events.

Michaela Melián’s tribute to Gustav Metzger is mounted in front of Kunsthalle Nürnberg, which previously hosted Metzger’s 1999 solo show Ein Schnitt entlang der Zeit.

The situation in front of the Kunsthalle was photographed from the opposite side of the street. On the left, you can see the old city wall, and on the right, the intersection of Königstorgraben and Lorenzer Straße.
 

Melián’s sculpture was produced as part of the Symposion Urbanum Nürnberg 2025, supported by the building department of the city of Nuremberg, in cooperation with Kunsthalle Nürnberg and Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft.

Michaela Melián (*1956 in Munich), artist and musician, lives in Munich and Marseille.

 

 

Performance

Installation of the sculpture Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg in front of Kunsthalle Nürnberg on Thursday, September 18, 2025

Documentation of the performance. A posterer attaches the print to the steel plate. He is standing on a short ladder and a crane can be seen in the background.

The poster installer smooths the print with a brush. The motif shows Adolf Hitler in front of a crowd of young people in Hitler Youth uniforms giving the Nazi salute.

Using a crane controlled by a person on the left of the image, a second steel plate is swung in from the left in front of the first steel plate with the image. Two assistants align the plate.

A worker wearing face protection welds the edges of the two steel plates. Two photographers and a centrally positioned tripod with a camera can be seen.
Documentation of the installation, photos: Michaela Melián

 

Recording of the performance, 23 min.
> Watch on YouTube

 

 

Panel discussion

in the context of the installation of the sculpture Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg on Thursday, September 18, 2025

with Wolfgang Brauneis (art historian and curator, Cologne), Justin Hoffmann (director of the Kunstverein Wolfsburg), Michaela Melián (artist and musician, Munich/Marseille), Alexander Schmidt (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände / Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Nuremberg), and Michaela Unterdörfer (Hauser & Wirth, Zurich)

The discussion with Michaela Melián at the microphone and four other people at a table in front of the audience in the foyer of the Kunsthalle Nürnberg.
Panel discussion in the foyer of the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Photo: Ludwig Olah

 

Recording of the panel discussion, 57 min.
> Watch on YouTube