iMUCA – Museum of Urban and Contemporary ArtAltstadt-Lehel
Antony Micallef – The Future Is Stupid
This exhibition has ended.
A career survey of British painter Antony Micallef, spanning over 50 works, new paintings from an artist residency, sculpture and animation, shown across the main museum and the MUCA Bunker.
Museum websiteMore in Munich
You walk into MUCA's main hall and ten aluminium panels, each about two metres high, face you with larger-than-life black figures, faces smeared out, some with fighting dogs beside them. Micallef painted them during a year-long Munich residency, stamping and smudging the oil so the silhouettes seem to lean in on you.
Behind them is the survey: over fifty works from twenty-plus years, including relief-like Raw Intent self-portraits and bronzes unseen since the Royal Academy in 2008. On the mezzanine, a vitrine holds his paint-spattered shoes and a slab of his studio floor. In a city where landlords keep the Kaution over a scuffed parquet, his oil-crusted floor gets a vitrine. The 2010s pop work, Mickey Mouse and brand logos turned against themselves, hangs in the MUCA Bunker next door.
Isarblog called it worth seeing. The €15 ticket covers both buildings and the collection; under-12s are free. Thursdays run to 8pm, and on 17 October, the Long Night of Museums, MUCA stays open until 1am.
Look for
The aluminium figures
Look for ten two-metre metal panels in the main hall, with hooded black figures and blurred faces, some flanked by fighting dogs, the metal reflecting the light around them.
The studio vitrine
On the mezzanine: his paint-spattered painting shoes, a piece of studio floor with oil paint piled up in layers, and a miniature model of his London studio.
Trump Fags
In the Bunker, Trump's portrait on a cigarette pack with the warning 'seriously harms you and others around you', an image downloaded over 100,000 times for protests.
A Book of Oils: A Time to Dance
Thick layers of old paper and abstract drawings that point to a medieval map of the cosmos, witch hunts and a 16th-century dancing plague.
Raw Intent self-portraits
Micallef's own face built up in oil so thick it turns into relief, halfway between portrait and abstraction.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Out-Of-Town Guests
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You want easy, decorative art: the new paintings are threatening silhouettes, made amid news of ICE crackdowns.
With kids
Children under 12 get into all MUCA exhibitions free.
Also at MUCA – Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art
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Image credits
7
- MUCA – Museum of Urban and Contemporary ArtMailtosap / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Yalla. Arab-Jewish EncountersPhoto: Eva Jünger / Jewish Museum Munich
- Barcelona Moderna: From Gaudí to PicassoCourtesy of Kunsthalle München
- Jewish Museum MunichH-stt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Kunsthalle MünchenMaximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa), CC BY-SA 2.5
- Munich ResidenzAvi1111 dr. avishai teicher / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National SocialismRaimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0