Cyrill Lachauer. The Sunset Route at Kunstpalais: Experience Art and Landscape in Erlangen

Cyrill Lachauer at Kunstpalais: A Landscape as Narrative Space

With The Sunset Route, Kunstpalais Erlangen presents an exhibition where photography, film, and installation merge into a dense poetic narrative. Cyrill Lachauer places landscape not as a mere backdrop, but as a bearer of history, political experience, and lived present at the center. The exhibition brings together works from 2020 to 2026 and leads into a visual space of freedom, resistance, migration, colonization, and exploitation. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Narrative Landscapes between America and Europe

Lachauer, born in 1979 in the Inn Valley, has been developing a body of work for years that connects photographic observation, filmic research, and cultural fieldwork. His artistic practice conceptualizes places as repositories of memory: people, animals, material traces, atmospheres, and voids create a complex web. This expanded concept of landscape also shapes the current exhibition and gives it extraordinary depth. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Between Freight Train, Migration, and Visual Condensation

At the center is the route of the title, the Sunset Route, a railway line over 3,000 kilometers long through the southern USA. From this starting point, Lachauer unfolds a visual narrative about transit, social inequality, and fragile forms of self-determination. The newly presented films Slack, The Prologue, and The Epilogue combine musical, documentary, and essayistic layers; they revolve around contemporary experiences, historical burdens, and transnational movements. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Photography as Collage, Montage as a Thought Form

The photographs also develop a strong examination of the work in space: Cardboard & Copenhagen works with disposable cameras and translates being on the move into a fleeting, immediate visual language. The series Birds transforms landscape photographs and nature images into collages of high formal tension. At Kunstpalais, these works are brought together in an installation, creating an overarching narrative that draws visitors into an intense aesthetic experience. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Curatorial Precision and Strong Museum Practice

The exhibition is a collaboration with the Goetz Collection in Munich and was curated by Susanne Touw and Malte Lin-Kröger. For visitors, this not only opens up an art experience but also provides a well-founded access to contemporary art, documentary aesthetics, and curatorial research. Kunstpalais is firmly anchored in the cultural life of Erlangen as a museum of contemporary art and is located centrally at the marketplace in the Baroque Palais Stutterheim. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Visit to Kunstpalais: Compact, Accessible, Well Connected

Those visiting the exhibition will find a house with clear visitor information: Kunstpalais opens during ongoing exhibitions from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm, Wednesdays until 8 pm. The regular admission is 8 euros, reduced 4 euros; certain groups receive free admission. Access to the exhibition rooms in the basement is barrier-free via an elevator, and the house is just a few minutes' walk from Erlangen main train station. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/en/133/Besuch-planen.html))

Conclusion: The Sunset Route is an exhibition for everyone who wants to experience photography, film, and political contemporary art in a precise, atmospheric staging. Those engaging with Lachauer's work encounter an art that not only shows images but opens spaces for thought. A visit to Kunstpalais is particularly worthwhile for art enthusiasts who appreciate narrative image strategies and contemporary exhibition culture. ([kunstpalais.de](https://www.kunstpalais.de/de/117/Ausstellung-Detailseite.html/Cyrill-Lachauer-The-Sunset-Route%3A112.html))

Official Channels of Cyrill Lachauer:

• Instagram: No official profile found
• Facebook: No official profile found
• YouTube: No official profile found
• Website: No official profile found

Sources:

• Kunstpalais Erlangen – Exhibition: Cyrill Lachauer. The Sunset Route
• Kunstpalais Erlangen – Visit planning / admission / accessibility
• Goetz Collection – Cyrill Lachauer
• Kunstpalais Erlangen – Data Protection with Social Media Notices
• Kunstpalais Erlangen – Educational Offer and Booking