by Mia Butter // June 2, 2026
It’s been over a decade since Germany has held an extensive survey of the Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins’ work. After an Austrian iteration of ‘Potentialities’ at Kunsthalle Wien, the show was recently refreshed and remounted at Hannover’s Kestner Gesellschaft. Entering through the revolving doors of the gallery into the lobby, you can catch a glimpse of Hawkins’ miniature haunted house, ‘House Capriccio.’ I make my way to a shelf in the entrance hall, where a selection of books that relate to the exhibition are on display: ‘Disidentifications’ by José Esteban Muñoz—featuring a blonde, flower-clad Vaginal Davis on the cover—as well as ‘Cruising Pavilion,’ an edited volume by curators Charles Teyssou and Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, about their project of the same name at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Another title that caught my eye was Karol Radziszewski’s ‘The Power of Secrets,’ a collection of queer archival material from eastern Europe.
Richard Hawkins, portrait // Photo by Laurence Ellis
The idea of the “power of secrets” stayed with me while I walked through the seven rooms, all filled with the last 20 years of Hawkins’ oeuvre. Each room contains paintings, ceramic reliefs, sculptures, collages and video works, but also documents. Laid inside glass vitrines, the documents are scattered with sticky notes. Photocopied pages of typewriter letters and annotated analyses of Forrest Bess’ works fill an entire room, titled ‘The Forrest Bess-Variations’ (2022-23), and feature reinterpretations of the mid-century painter’s works. This isn’t the only room dedicated to another artist: rooms five, six and seven are dedicated to Pierre Bonnard, Tatsumi Hijikata and Mike Kelley, respectively. Hawkins not only openly references these artists, he researches their practices and lays out an investigation. His nerdy obsessions aren’t random research projects, either, but stem from an “autobiographical identification.” In the case of Forrest Bess, a fisherman and painter, Hawkins was inspired by how Bess’ queerness was integral to his practice, sparking an in-depth investigation that led to Hawkins decoding Bess’ works. This is all presented to visitors to discover for themselves. “Who better to put these things together?” Hawkins says in an interview, and I couldn’t agree more.
Richard Hawkins, (f. l. t. r.) ‘Fruits in Mars Black Shadow (after Bonnard),’ 2025; ‘Sprinkler,’ 2023, installation view, ‘Potentialities,’ 2026 at Kestner Gesellschaft // Photo by Volker Crone
Secrets, or the lack thereof in this case, set the tone of the exhibition. What does it mean to have speculative research, and present it so openly? So enthusiastically? As though the product of these investigations, from paintings to ceramic creations, weren’t enough, we get the receipts, too. This does something to the viewer, to the quality of the exhibition and the relationships we develop with the artist, often an underrated effect of a show. Hawkins’ vulnerability in sharing his eccentric preoccupations with us is not only enriching, it’s charming.
Richard Hawkins: ‘House Capriccio,’ 2008, installation view, ‘Potentialities,’ 2026 at Kestner Gesellschaft // Photo by Volker Crone
The rooms where Hawkins’ research was more broadly pop culturally-informed are filled with brightly painted assemblages of paint and printed cut-outs of pop stars and Greek gods. Here we return to ‘House Capriccio,’ a dilapidated dollhouse with crooked wooden boards, and a green light leaking from the boarded-up windows that screams campy horror. The haunted house is not scary, but a caricature of fear, and a jewel in the crown of other works that share the same politics of desire: the pleasure of looking, and in doing so, rejecting shame.
A screen hangs on the wall, which is wallpapered with the interior of the ‘House Capriccio.’ The video work ‘The Lust for Evil Sequence (Vienna Version)’ flashes scenes from ‘Legend’ (1985), featuring a 22-year-old Tom Cruise, and other scenes of the young actor, scantily clad. The clips are slowed in moments where Cruise’s backside or bare chest are most visible, and repeated on a loop. Practically a tween fan edit, desire and looking are at the forefront of this body of work. A young Matt Dillon’s face is everywhere, the chiseled torsos of sculptures from Ancient Greece and Rome are plastered onto painted canvases. As the works progress, these icons fall further behind layers of oil stick, until we enter the adjacent room, where they have morphed into bright acrylic paintings. Timothée Chalamet meets Justin Bieber in one work, alongside an AI-generated, rat-like creature, recognizable from a niche corner of the internet.
Richard Hawkins: ‘Potentialities,’ 2026, installation view at Kestner Gesellschaft // Photo by Volker Crone
Hawkins invites us into his world and, surprisingly, spells out how the painting was made. In a dark curtained room, a video reveals the digital references used for the Chalamet-Bieber-Molerat painting, titled ‘Left to His Own Devices.’ In a tutorial-like fashion, the video shows a sped up screen recording of the work being created: Chalamet’s head here, Bieber’s head popping out from the side there. We see Hawkins rearrange the compositions a few times before the reference images are overlaid with a photo of the final painting. I can’t recall ever seeing so much honesty in an institutional show of this caliber. Not only is Hawkins incredibly generous with his research, he clearly doesn’t feel the need to conceal anything—what for? It’s revealed that Hawkins uses a projector to outline his paintings, which would send some into a finger-pointing frenzy, but you can’t even fault him for it: his unabashed honesty make the works endlessly fun.
Richard Hawkins, (f. l. t. r.) ‘Dandy Floriculturists,’ 2025; ‘On the Terrace,’ 2023; ‘3 Jacks for Autumn,’ 2025, installation view, ‘Potentialities,’ 2026 at Kestner Gesellschaft // Photo by Volker Crone
The title ‘Potentialities’ hints at the potential of being something else. Hawkins makes the art he wants to see, inextricable from his lust for looking, and brings us along for the ride. The suffix “ities” is tacked on to words to abstract them, and it can be instantly off-putting, but the lack of pretension in Hawkins’ work and his raw investigative passion neutralizes that. He is not “just” providing works for a solo show, and the Kestner Gesellschaft is not “just” curating them: they’re wholeheartedly collaborating. Whether it’s an antidote to Hawkins’ contagious honesty, or the fact that I can’t get the pink cover image out of my head, something draws me back to ‘The Power of Secrets’ as I exit the show.
Exhibition Info
Kestner Gesellschaft
Richard Hawkins: ‘Potentialities’
Exhibition: Apr. 24-Aug. 2, 2026
kestnergesellschaft.de
Goseriede 11, 30159 Hannover, click here for map
