Image: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart has introduced a new satellite presentation in its collection display ‘THIS IS TOMORROW’, using works by Neo Rauch, Erwin Wurm and Marta Hoepffner to stage a focused look at surrealism beyond its canonical beginnings in the 1920s. The museum says the room serves as a preview of the special exhibition ‘Alles surreal?!’, which is scheduled to open in December 2026.
According to the museum’s announcement, the new section is conceived as a journey into “the world of the unconscious, the enigmatic and the paradoxical.” It sets out to show that surrealist strategies are not confined to the historical avant-garde, but continue to function as a visual and conceptual resource in later art. The installation presents surrealism as a pictorial strategy operating between dream, absurdity and inner reality.
The three works named in the presentation each anchor that idea in a different medium and historical moment. Rauch’s painting ‘Ordnungshüter’ is described by the museum as unfolding an enigmatic, time-detached scene. Wurm’s sculpture extends bodily irritation into space. Hoepffner’s photographic self-portrait from 1935 points back to the experimental force of surreal image-making in its historical context. Together, the works are intended to demonstrate how alive and contemporary surrealist ways of thinking and seeing remain.
The museum’s framing also ties the display to the collection presentation that hosts it, rather than treating it as a standalone exhibition. In that context, ‘THIS IS TOMORROW’ becomes the setting for a smaller, newly added thematic room, rather than a separate temporary show with its own full-run dates in the material provided. The announcement does not specify a closing date for the satellite presentation.
For the Staatsgalerie, the installation also forms part of a broader August programme. The newsletter that announced the new room went on to list a six-part ‘Crashkurs Kunstgeschichte’ on the Classical Modern, a curators’ tour on 19th-century photography and women in front of and behind the camera, a summer holiday programme for children, and several guided tours and events around the museum’s collections and exhibitions. Those listings sit alongside, but separate from, the main presentation in ‘THIS IS TOMORROW’.
The August newsletter also links the new satellite room to the museum’s longer-term exhibition planning. ‘Alles surreal?!’ is described as the winter 2026 special exhibition for which the new display acts as a precursor. In the wording of the announcement, the added room offers visitors an early invitation to engage with surrealist thinking through a mix of painting, sculpture and photography, with works spanning from Hoepffner’s 1935 self-portrait to Rauch’s 2008 ‘Ordnungshüter’.
