The landscape as an expressive space imbued with meaning serves as a point of reference to which Cyrill Lachauer (born 1979 in the Inntal, Germany) repeatedly returns in his photographic and filmic work. With a keen sense of historical and political contexts, Lachauer has traveled extensively over the years through the United States, Mexico, and Bosnia. The exhibition The Sunset Route at the Kunstpalais brings together works created between 2020 and 2026 that address pressing questions in the form of a poetic autoethnography: questions of freedom, self-determination, and resistance, but also of colonization, exclusion, and exploitation. At the center of this is Lachauer’s concept of “narrative landscapes”—places that encompass people, local cultures, stories, objects, and physical conditions. Within this framework, Lachauer explores the possibilities of speaking with, rather than about, these spaces. 

The title The Sunset Route refers to the railway line of the same name, which stretches over 3,000 kilometers and connects the interior of the southern United States with the Pacific Coast. Since the late 19th century, hobos (migrant workers) and other transient people have traveled across North America on freight trains along this and other routes. Lachauer began crossing the country himself as a train hopper in 2019. This phase gave rise to the film project Slack, on which Lachauer collaborated with U.S. photographer Mike Brodie from 2022 to 2025. The work pays tribute to Brodie’s partner Mia Justice Smith—known as Slack—who died at a young age, while also serving as a symbol of a generation shaped by the fentanyl crisis, social media, and a personal thirst for freedom. 

Two new short films, shown for the first time, The Prologue, 2026 (Cyrill Lachauer in collaboration with Rhyw) and The Epilogue, 2026 (in collaboration with Mouse Green and Moritz Stumm), complement Slack as part of a loose trilogy. They stand on their own but are thematically linked by the railway motif. The Prologue focuses on trains from the Nazi era that are still in use in Bosnia’s coal-mining regions, while The Epilogue was filmed in Mexico along the migration routes on freight trains bound for the United States. 

The exhibition also offers an in-depth look at Lachauer’s photographic work. The extensive series Cardboard & Copenhagen, 2026, and Birds (Nat. Geo. 1989–1999), 2022, are based on different concepts and each feature a distinct aesthetic. Cardboard & Copenhagen was shot exclusively with disposable cameras and, accordingly, captures moments from life on freight trains in a casual manner—constantly on the move and only temporarily coming to rest on cardboard. For the Birds series, Lachauer assembled landscape photographs from a decade of National Geographic magazine into collages in the form of an abstracted bird’s head. They document the beauty of nature and the destruction wrought by humans, yet simultaneously embody symbols of hope and resistance.

Lachauer’s photo series and films come together in an installation at the Kunstpalais. Individual elements from the multi-part artworks are rearranged to form an overarching narrative and combined with site-specific works. This approach, which has been employed in previous exhibitions, is a defining feature of Lachauer’s presentations.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Sammlung Goetz in Munich and the Kunstpalais, and is curated by Susanne Touw and Malte Lin-Kröger.

Slack was produced by the Sammlung Goetz and co-produced by Videoart at Midnight Productions and Flipping the Coin. The Prologue was produced by the Sammlung Goetz and the Autotelic Foundation. The Epilogue was produced by the Sammlung Goetz.

The works on view in the exhibition were supported by: Berlinische Galerie – State Museum of Modern Art, Jan Fischer, the Ingvild and Stephan Goetz Art Foundation, Ulrich and Nathan Köstlin, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Ingeborg Neumann, Sammlung R, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and Scumeck Sabottka

Studio production and executive producer: Nils Petersen / Flipping the Coin, Berlin

Image: Cyrill Lachauer, Slack, 2025, S16mm film, transferred to 2K video, 61:06 minutes, color, 5.1 stereo sound