Deutsche Bank Campus in Frankfurt

Under the motto “Art works”, Deutsche Bank has been providing access to contemporary art for more than 40 years: with its collection, in international exhibitions, at the PalaisPopulaire in Berlin, and through targeted educational programs.

At the center of the bank’s global art activities is the Deutsche Bank Collection. Founded in 1979, today it is one of the world’s most important collections of drawings and photographs after 1945. Art characterizes the bank’s business rooms in financial centers such as Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Milan, New York, and Zurich.

In the immediate vicinity of the Deutsche Bank Towers, the Deutsche Bank Campus opened in spring 2017. It provides another innovative platform for the corporate collection. More than 700 works on paper and photographs by around 140 artists document the diversity of the global art landscape.

While in the Towers each floor is devoted to an artist, the Campus concept focuses on current, global discourses. Here the works on each floor are assigned to a certain thematic complex. Artists around the world are engaging in the social debates regarding migration, gender roles, nature protection and the preservation of the Earth, as well as life in mega cities.

Address and contact

Deutsche Bank Campus
Mainzer Landstraße 11 - 17
60329 Frankfurt am Main

mailbox.kunst@db.com 

The Building – The Themes

Lobby

In the Andes, Frank Thiel photographed one of the world’s few glaciers that is not receding but continuing to grow, thus resisting global warming.

Lobby Frank Thiel Perito Moreno

Frank Thiel, Perito Moreno #01, 2012-2013

Shifting Identities – Gender and Diversity

Time and time again, Zhu Jia chips away at the image of current Chinese consumer society. In the eponymous series of photographs accompanying his film “Zero”, he has a woman appear in different roles and situations at various places in Beijing.

Level 1 zhu-jia-1900

Zhu Jia, Zero, 2012

Cycles of Life – Nature and Sustainability

Nature as an image produced by human imagination – a number of contemporary artists have made use of the artificiality of this idea. In a highly aesthetic way, Olaf Nicolai also presents nature: as an artificial paradise in a light box.

Level 2 Olaf Nicolai

Olaf Nicolai, Nach der Natur I, 1997

Brave New World – Communications and New Technologies

Fascinated by nineteenth-century history painting, the Argentinian artist Lux Lindner initially started copying it, before consistently pursuing his own style. His visual language is punctuated with cultural, social, and political allusions to (local) history, literature, music, and repeatedly sprinkled with references to historical facts and circumstances.

Level 3 lux-lindner

Lux Lindner, Das Sprachvermögen des Orchesters, Weltschmerz Sound Machine, Funky, 2013

Taking a Stand – Politically Engaged Art

In his series “Second Transition”, Thabiso Sekgala depicts life in South Africa’s mining regions, including the mood in the settlements around the platinum mines north of Johannesburg. The title of the series, “Second Transition”, refers to the ANC’s initiative to tackle the country’s inequalities concerning business and living standards.

Level 5 Thabiso Sekgala

Thabiso Sekgala, Second Transition, 2012

The Future is Now – Art and Utopia

The utopian collages of the New York artist Agathe Snow transform landmarks and monuments from around the world into consumer goods that are combined into fictive new worlds.

Level 4 Agathe Snow

Agathe Snow, Walls, 2010

Crossing Borders – Globalization and Migration

The photographic work reflects the relationships of a second-generation migrant to her mother and her daughter. Zineb Sedira, who in other works often deals with the French-Algerian War and its consequences, focuses here on communicative and emotional levels of her own history.

Level 6 Zineb Sedira

Zineb Sedira, Mother, Daughter and I, 2003

My Metropolis – Art and Urbanism

This work by Liebscher is based on a digital assembly of analog photographs. The artist removed the locking mechanism from an analog 35 mm camera and was thus able to continually wind the film during exposure. The resulting panoramas shows special vacation spots or his everyday surroundings, pictured here is the Zeil in Frankfurt.

Level 7 liebscher

Martin Liebscher, Frankfurt/Zeil, 1995

Highlights of the Collection

With the portrait series “Sworn Virgins” Pepa Hristova poses questions about identity and the loss of identity. In her photo compositions she shows the “Sworn Virgins”: women, in the mountain villages of Albania who have taken on the role of family leaders and thus live as “men”.

Level 8 Pepa Hristova

Pepa Hristova, HAKIJE #1, LANDSCAPE #7, from the series Sworn Virgins