Richard Hawkins brings online subcultures and 'nerdy research' to Kestner Gesellschaft

The Kestner Gesellschaft is presenting Potentialities, a major survey of works by Richard Hawkins. Since the early 1990s, the Los Angeles–based artist has developed a singular practice centered nerdy research, the dynamics of fandom and desire, and on the intense pleasure of looking. Comprising more than 100 works across eight bodies of work, the exhibition offers the first major institutional overview of Hawkins’s oeuvre in more than a decade. Potentialities focuses on works produced over the past twenty years, spanning painting, sculpture, ceramic reliefs, and AI-generated videos that draw on online subcultures and shared memes. The exhibition opens with a group of paintings made through processes of cutting and pasting imagery from magazines and publications (2017–24). These works bring together sources as diverse as Greek and Roman statuary, headshots of hair models, thirst traps, gay adult film stars, and Hollywood icons, establishing collage and the combination of