The ex­hi­bi­tion se­ries HERE AND NOW reg­u­lar­ly puts our work at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig to test and chal­lenges the cus­to­mary and fa­miliar struc­tures of or­ganiz­ing ex­hi­bi­tions. The lat­est it­er­a­tion of the se­ries con­nects here and now with yes­ter­day and to­mor­row. It fo­cus­es on the ground on which the mu­se­um is built, ex­amin­ing the depths of time and the fu­ture from this spot. Held both in­side and out­side the mu­se­um, the show brings to­gether con­tem­po­rary artists such as Ta­ci­ta Dean and his­tor­i­cal art, ques­tions ge­ol­o­gy and archae­ol­o­gy, and sculpts the fu­ture Mu­se­um Lud­wig to­gether with the Ber­lin land­s­cape ar­chi­tects from Ate­li­er le bal­to.

Start­ing with the con­cept of deep time, a di­men­sion of time that sur­pass­es hu­man com­pre­hen­sion and spans the mil­li­ons of years since the cre­a­tion of Earth to the pre­sent, the ex­hi­bi­tion ex­plores art and sci­ence, mak­ing past and fu­ture pre­sents pal­pa­ble. The pro­ject of­fers a space for joint learn­ing with vari­ous dis­ci­p­lines and is the first de­mon­s­tra­b­ly cli­mate-neu­tral ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast

Roni Horn: Give Me Para­dox or Give Me Death at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive sur­vey of the work of the in­flu­en­tial Amer­i­can artist Roni Horn (*1955 in New York), which will show the artist's out­s­tand­ing and di­verse oeu­vre from the be­gin­n­ing of her ca­reer in the late 1970s to the pre­sent day.

Em­brac­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, draw­ing, artist books, sculp­ture, and in­s­tal­la­tions, her work is ab­s­tract, fig­u­ra­tive, and doc­u­men­tary. This open­ness with re­spect to art re­flects a cen­tral idea in Horn’s work: ev­ery­thing in the world is sub­ject to change and might take on vari­ous con­di­tions and mean­in­gs. The ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig ex­amines this idea fo­cus­ing on three sub­jects from her work: na­ture, iden­ti­ty, and lan­guage. The artist finds a key to the world in lit­er­a­ture and po­et­ry, in­clud­ing po­ems by Emi­ly Dickin­son. Horn’s im­age of na­ture is not ro­man­tic she de­picts it as both threat­en­ing and threat­ened. In pho­to­graph­ic se­ries and self­por­traits from vari­ous pe­ri­ods of her life, she ex­amines her own iden­ti­ty while ad­dress­ing an over­rid­ing pur­pos that af­fects ev­ery­one: find­ing one’s own place in the world, re­gard­less of so­cial norms and be­liefs.

Cu­ra­tor: Yil­maz Dziewior

The art of the Fluxus move­ment caught on in the 1960s through Hap­pen­in­gs, con­certs, per­for­mances, and spon­ta­neous ac­tions, great­ly in­flu­enc­ing sub­se­quent artists. While the Mu­se­um Lud­wig col­lec­tion con­tains pie­ces by Nam June Paik, Daniel Spo­er­ri, and Mary Bauermeis­ter that are now con­sid­ered true clas­sics, the works of sculp­tor Ur­su­la Burghardt and com­pos­er Ben­jamin Pat­ter­son, who were both part of the Fluxus cir­cle, are less known. This ma­jor ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig takes a meet­ing be­tween Burghardt and Pat­ter­son in Cologne in 1960 as a start­ing point to fur­ther ex­amine their work and the com­plex ar­tis­tic net­works and col­lab­o­ra­tions in which both par­ti­ci­pat­ed. The breaks in their ca­reers, which came about due to ar­tis­tic and so­cial rea­sons, are par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing. The ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­clu­sion that both ex­pe­ri­enced due to their bi­o­gra­phies—Burghardt, who was Jew­ish, left Ger­many to es­cape the Nazis and re­turned af­ter the war, while Pat­ter­son was an Afri­can Amer­i­can mu­si­cian and artist in the Unit­ed States—is in­scribed in their works with­out be­com­ing the over­rid­ing sub­ject.

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach