Standing, sitting and strolling among 100 of the Beyeler Collection’s most iconic works are not only visitors but thirteen hyper-realistic sculptures by US artist Duane Hanson. Neither beautiful nor ugly, just ordinary at heart. The figures, embodying marginalised collectives of the 70s-80s American society, populate the rooms and enter a dialogue with both the artworks and the architecture. Yet only a special occasion could have attracted such guests, namely the Fondation Beyeler’s 25 Year Anniversary.

During the first Corona lockdown in New York, Kerstin Brätsch shifted her large-scale, collaborative practice into an inward-looking process. Mysticism, tarot, plant medicine and deitis, like the Sumerian sky goddess Innanna, guided her daily practice of drawing. The complete resulting series of 100 drawings on paper are now shown for the first time in “Die Sein: Para Psychics” at the Ludwig Forum Aachen. Wrapped in Wibke Tiarks’ soundscape and exhibited in a soft colored light, pouring from the room’s tinted windows, the mandala-like drawings become portals to the metaphysical.