Happy Hours

The GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst is proud to present works by students in the 2023 class of the master’s program at the University of the Arts Bremen (HfK). On the occasion of the exhibition, which is organized annually by a Bremen institution on a rotating basis, the Karin Hollweg Prize will award 18,000 euros to its recipient. The one-year master’s program at HfK Bremen allows a small group of artists to explore their artistic practice in greater depth following the completion of their graduate studies. This year’s students are presenting their final projects in the collective show Happy Hours. As a group, they provide a cross-media insight into the quality and diversity of current art production in Bremen. Rather than being assigned to a specific department, master’s students at HfK work together with professors from the Faculty of Fine Arts. They are connected by mutual exchanges as well as their shared engagement with the phenomena of a complex present. Their works address issues including identities and prevailing systems of knowledge, their modes of production, and their relationship to nature and the environment. As a result, the students open up spaces for reflection in a way that is equally poetic and critical. They were supported in their degree by the HfK professors Heike Kati Barath, Stephan Baumkötter, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Katrin von Maltzahn, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Julika Rudelius, and Ingo Vetter. Besides the exhibition rooms at the GAK, the 17 master’s students will also show their works in the project space at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art and on the HfK event ship Dauerwelle—two additional venues located in our immediate vicinity. The Karin Hollweg Prize is awarded annually on the occasion of the HfK master’s exhibition. It is one of the most valuable prizes awarded by an art academy in Germany. The prize is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation. The award is worth a total of 18,000 euros—half of which is paid directly to the prize-winner as prize money, while the other half is reserved for the realization of a solo exhibition.