Opening: Friday, January 16, 2026, 7 p.m.
Curated by Max Dax.
Post-Millennium Tension is Radenko Milak's first exhibition in Berlin and his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany since his show 365 at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt in 2014. The exhibition title can be translated as "Tensions since the turn of the millennium," as the underlying theme of the exhibition depicts a world out of joint in the still-young 21st century. It refers to the second album by British musician Tricky, released in 1996 as Pre-Millennium Tension .
Milak's watercolors establish a connection to the collective unconscious by referencing pivotal events of the early 21st century. In numerous black-and-white watercolors, some composed of many individual sheets to create enormous canvases, the artist, born in Travnik, Bosnia, in 1980, depicts key motifs of world history, painted in watercolors based on iconic photographs of current and past political and social events. By shifting from one medium (photography) to another (watercolor), Milak captures and displays the growing tension of instability and uncertainty in the world, while always maintaining a neutral perspective.
The exhibition is a complex narrative reflecting contradictory developments whose loose ends converge in the 21st century. Beginning with a reference to Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War (1810-14), Milak's images depict scenes ranging from the destruction of Cologne in World War II to Stanley Kubrick's portrayal of artificial intelligence in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey , the Munich massacre of 1972, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the Berghain of today.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 300-page publication encompassing the complete works of Radenko Milak. Edited by Max Dax together with Marc Wellmann for the Haus am Lützopplatz (HaL), the monograph includes a detailed essay by Udo Kittelmann and will be published by Snoeck Verlag.
This exhibition is supported by the La Balsa Arte Gallery, Bogota / Medellin.
This exhibition is a collaboration with Galerie Christine König, Vienna, Galerie Ani Molnar, Budapest, and Galerie Priska Pasquer, Cologne.
Media partner of the exhibition: NBIZ – Neue Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung
