The Weight of the Invisible is a two-part exhibition dedicated to the documentary work of the filmmaker and photographer Wang Bing.

While Wang Bing’s films are epic in their length and their historical and political scope, they are less concerned with grand events than with the small gestures and everyday acts on which the concrete form and substance of human life rests. The artist devotes a special kind of attention to the small, incidental, and marginal—one that knows that existential weight does not necessarily lie in the obvious, but rather in the in-between, in the interstitial, in the enduring, and in what accumulates.

Curated by Kathrin Bentele, the exhibition focuses on Wang Bing’s newest film works—among them a version of his ongoing project Youth, newly conceived as an installation for the Kunstverein—which appear in the second part of the exhibition alongside photographs from his early body of work. There is no predefined narration, no directed story, in these films—everything we see follows the movements and unpredictable course of what unfolds in front of the camera in real time.

It will be accompanied by an artist talk with Wang Bing at the Kunstverein on March 15, 2025 at 6pm, and a masterclass organized in cooperation with the Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf will be held on March 16, 2025 at 12pm.

Part II of the exhibition will take place from June 7 to August 24, 2025, with a new selection of works by Wang Bing including the film Beauty lives in Freedom (2018).

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