Jan Muche’s art explores social, left-wing utopias. In the artist’s space dedicated to Ilya Kabakov, his sculptures and paintings engage in a dialogue with Kabakov’s large-scale installation “The Red Car.” The installation “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” is on view at the Museum Wiesbaden through April 4, 2027.

For Berlin-based artist Jan Muche, one thing was clear from the start: an artistic intervention at the Museum Wiesbaden could only take place in the Kabakov Room. In addition to stylistic affinities, both artists are united by their engagement with social utopias. Ilya Kabakov explores such a utopia through the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, which he artistically processed in the installation *The Red Carriage*. Muche’s work is also characterized by an engagement with social illusions—more specifically, with left-wing social utopias. In doing so, he addresses social issues, grievances, and social injustices. Through his connection to Russian artists in the avant-garde visual language, a link to Kabakov becomes possible—Kabakov, who placed the euphoric dawn of art and politics in Russia at the beginning of his installation. Muche takes up Kabakov’s spirit and carries it forward by expanding Kabakov’s installation with paintings, sculptures, and objects.

Muche’s painted steel structures bear witness to industrialization, its boundless possibilities, and at the same time to the arduous labor that was required to achieve it.

Labor, justice, distribution, and participation converge in the painted steel architecture to form the social issues with which Muche confronts the visitor. The intervention illustrates how workers can be exploited and the concept of labor abused.

When Muche quotes Lenin’s seminal 1904 essay “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” as the headline for his exhibition, yet deliberately omits the “e” in “steps,” he very subtly points out that times—and our attitudes—have changed.