The glowing blue neon tube artwork NEVER AGAIN by conceptual artist Jan Kuck is to be understood as a clear sign and commitment to our Jewish fellow citizens and against the anti-Semitism that is currently flaring up worldwide.
Due to our historical responsibility, we must do everything in our power to ensure that violence against our fellow human beings of the Jewish faith, is never again permitted, never again justified and never again an accepted part of our society.
NEVER AGAIN is a future-oriented warning that our unbearably destructive past must never again become our present.
NEVER AGAIN was shown for the first time in January 2018 in the former city prison of the Palazzo Ducale above the rooftops of Genoa as part of the Shoa exhibition “Segrete. Tracce di Memoria” exhibition. For the annual exhibition, curator Virginia Monteverde invites a total of seven Italian and German artists to explore the horrors of the Shoah through their works.
For all subsequent stations of NEVER AGAIN, it was imperative that the respective exhibition had a connection to the crimes of National Socialism – be it through a critical examination of the content or through the location of the exhibition.
Immediately after the inconceivable terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Jan Kuck and his artist colleague Richard Wurm designed a display window as an expression of solidarity in the ORAG building in front of the synagogue on St. Jakob’s Square in Munich. Richard Wurm with a painting and Jan Kuck with his neon work NEVER AGAIN.
It was there that the idea was born to carry this sign into the heart of the city, to the New City Hall on Marienplatz.
Jan Kuck, born in 1978 in Hannover, lives and works in Berlin and Munich.
