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WALTER DAHN, Pilzschnecke, 2002, Vintage C-Print, 40 × 60,5 cm, © Walter Dahn, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers · Design: Kühle and Mozer
WALTER DAHN, Die Tiroler sind lustig, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 250 × 190,5 cm, private collection, © Walter Dahn, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers, photo: Timo Ohler
WALTER DAHN, Warum, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 133 × 100 cm, private collection, © Walter Dahn, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers, photo: Mareike Tocha

Walter Dahn · Have Love Will Travel

This exhibition will offer extensive insights into Walter Dahn's work from 1986 onward, showcasing the versatility of an artist who first became known in the early 1980s as a key representative of the "Mülheimer Freiheit" art movement, primarily through his paintings. Largely created after this era, the works shown in this exhibition illustrate Dahn's expanded understanding of painting, as well as his own multi-layered reference system, which picks up on influences from (popular) culture and the history of ideas.

Have Love Will Travel, the title of the seventh exhibition at Haus Mödrath, is borrowed from a song by the Sonics and highlights the strong presence of music in Dahn's artistic work, which constitutes a central focus here.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue with essays by Diedrich Diederichsen and Oliver Tepel that shed light on the symbiotic role of music in Dahn's work from musical, cultural, and art-historical perspectives.

Walter Dahn was born in 1954 in Sanct Antonius in der Heyde . From 1971 to 1977 he studied with Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was awarded a Meisterschüler degree in 1975. Since 1976, his work has been presented at numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Germany and abroad. From 1995 to 2017, Dahn was a professor of painting at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK).