Museum BrandhorstKunstareal, Maxvorstadt
Spot On focus exhibition on New Zealand artist Kate Newby's material-based practice.
Before the clay was fired, Kate Newby pressed into it what she had noticed around the city: drawings, cut-outs, patterns and, in places, shards of glass now fused into the brick. Around 1,000 of those bricks lie in the grass outside Museum Brandhorst, in two lines over 80 metres long.
You find them on the green strip between the building and the Türkenstraße pavement, running toward Walter De Maria's Large Red Sphere in the Türkentor. They read like gutters, a nod to the Türkengraben, the canal that gave the street its name and was never finished. Rainwater, dirt and whatever the wind brings collect in the bricks, so the piece changes over its twelve months on site. Of everything in the Kunstareal, it's the one work meant to collect rain.
It opened with Carrying, the museum's show about the site's military past, and it's a single quiet work, not an afternoon. It sits in public space outside the building; Carrying inside takes the normal €7 ticket until 8 November.
Glass fused into the clay
Look closely at the brick faces for the drawings, cut-outs and patterns Newby pressed in before firing, some with glass shards melted into them.
Two lines toward the Large Red Sphere
Follow the 80-metre lines along the lawn and they lead you to Walter De Maria's huge red ball in the Türkentor gate.
What the bricks have caught
Check the hollows for rainwater, dirt and whatever the wind has blown in, which the museum treats as part of the work.
You want a gallery show: this is one outdoor work of bricks set into a lawn.