Sibylle Bergemann – The Monument

November 21 – December 20, 2025

Opening: November 21, 2015 | 5–8pm

LOOCK Gallery is pleased to present The Monument (1975–1986), the most significant work by Sibylle Bergemann (1941–2010). Bergemann captures the creation of the Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels monument in East Berlin, which was erected in 1986 on behalf of the GDR government, in an ironic documentary ambiguity. The exhibition at the LOOCK Gallery Berlin runs parallel to the exhibition curated by Sonia Voss at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson Paris. The Monument was recently presented at Paris Photo 2025.

The publication by Kerber Verlag accompanying the exhibition brings together the iconic images and numerous previously unpublished photographs, as well as the reception of Bergemann‘s photographs from their first publication in 1983 to the publication with texts by Heiner Müller in 1990. Accompanying essays open up a multi-layered historical, socio-political, and photo-theoretical context that sheds new light on Bergemann‘s long-term documentation. Thus, The Monument can be experienced not only as an extraordinary artistic narrative, but also as a key work in the field of tension between art, ideology, and memory culture.

The series Das Denkmal is held in the collections of the CRP/ Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-de-France (Douchy-les-Mines), the DZ Bank at the Städel Museum (Frankfurt am Main), the Reinbeckhallen Foundation (Berlin), the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), MoMA (New York), the Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA), the Berlinische Galerie (Berlin), and SFMOMA (San Francisco).