{"id":2250734,"date":"2026-01-26T09:41:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T09:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2250734"},"modified":"2026-01-26T09:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T09:41:04","slug":"gretchen-bender-at-spruth-magers-political-entertainment-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/gretchen-bender-at-spruth-magers-political-entertainment-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Gretchen Bender at Spr\u00fcth Magers: political entertainment revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

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GRETCHEN BENDER, \u2018Top Ten Grossing Films of 1988: Good Morning Vietnam,\u2019 detail, 1989. Courtesy of SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On view at Spr\u00fcth Magers, Berlin<\/a><\/strong>, from November 14th 2025 to April 4th, 2026, Political Entertainment<\/em> revisits the radical practice of Gretchen Bender, foregrounding her sharp critique of mass media, corporate power, and the politics embedded in popular culture. The exhibition brings together landmark works that feel strikingly current, situating Bender\u2019s practice within ongoing debates around the politics of memory and visual consumption.<\/p>\n

Politics of memory and mass media<\/strong><\/h3>\n

At the heart of the exhibition is Top Ten Grossing Films of 1988<\/em>, shown for the first time since its debut in 1989. This series of ten conceptual sculptures, made from crumpled black heat-set vinyl and illuminated with neon, displays the titles of Hollywood\u2019s most profitable films of that year. By isolating these box-office successes, Bender exposes how entertainment functions as a vehicle for political and financial interests, revealing cinema as a tool of persuasion rather than neutral escapism.<\/p>\n

Conceptual sculpture as cultural critique<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The exhibition also places Top Ten Grossing Films of 1988<\/em> in dialogue with People in Pain<\/em>, a monumental installation composed of over a hundred film titles drawn from industry magazines before the movies were even released. Conceived as a dense mass of visual information, the work reflects on overproduction, disposability, and the fleeting value of cultural content. Together, the projects trace how anticipation, consumption, and forgetting shape collective memory.<\/p>\n

Corporate forms and cultural aftermath<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Completing the presentation is Untitled (X Floor Piece)<\/em>, a brushed steel and film sculpture from 1989. With its rigid, architectural geometry partially buried beneath discarded 35mm film, the work evokes a civilisation overwhelmed by its own media output\u2014an image that resonates powerfully in today\u2019s algorithm-driven landscape.<\/p>\n

More than three decades on, Gretchen Bender\u2019s work remains uncannily prescient. Political Entertainment<\/em> positions her practice as a vital lens through which to reconsider how images are produced, circulated, and remembered\u2014and how power quietly operates behind the spectacle.<\/p>\n

\"Gretchen
Exhibition view: Gretchen Bender<\/em>, Political Entertainment<\/em>, SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS, Berlin (14 November 2025-4 April 2026)\u00a0
Courtesy of SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\"Gretchen
Exhibition view: Gretchen Bender<\/em>, Political Entertainment<\/em>, SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS, Berlin (14 November 2025-4 April 2026)\u00a0
Courtesy of SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Gretchen
Exhibition view: Gretchen Bender<\/em>, Political Entertainment<\/em>, SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS, Berlin (14 November 2025-4 April 2026)\u00a0
Courtesy of SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source hubemag.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GRETCHEN BENDER, \u2018Top Ten Grossing Films of 1988: Good Morning Vietnam,\u2019 detail, 1989. Courtesy of SPR\u00dcTH MAGERS On view at Spr\u00fcth Magers, Berlin, from November 14th 2025 to April 4th, 2026, Political Entertainment revisits the radical practice of Gretchen Bender, foregrounding her sharp critique of mass media, corporate power, and the politics embedded in popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2250735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2250734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Gretchen-Bender-at-Spruth-Magers-political-entertainment-revisited.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2250736,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250734\/revisions\/2250736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2250735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}