To paradise

Paradise: an eternal object of longing, and also a mirror of our time. The idea of ​​paradise is everywhere: in advertising, literature, film, television, and art. But why does paradise fascinate us so much today? The exhibition focuses on exploring a small selection of the paths the idea of ​​paradise has taken us on so far. Not as an abstract consideration, but as a concrete search for traces in landscapes, images, bodies, and social structures. Villa Schöningen is situated in a setting that was itself designed. The gardens along the Havel River, shaped by Peter Joseph Lenné and Gustav Meyer, belong to the Prussian Arcadia, where nature was cultivated. Here, landscape appears as an ideal and a promise.

The exhibition unfolds a network of relationships between historical and contemporary perspectives. Motifs shift, overlap, and enter into new contexts. Thus, paradise appears not as a lost place, but as a concept that shapes reality and whose traces can be followed into our present day.