2022 Pro­gram

This is our 2022 ex­hi­bi­tion pro­gram.

Ex­hi­bi­tion

ISA­MU NOGUCHI

March 26 – Ju­ly 31, 2022

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is host­ing the first com­pre­hen­sive ret­ro­spec­tive in Eu­rope in over twen­ty years on the Amer­i­can-Ja­pa­nese sculp­tor Isa­mu Noguchi (*1904 in Los An­ge­les, †1988 in New York). For the first time, it will cov­er all of Noguchi’s cre­a­tive pe­ri­ods with 150 works and pre­sent him as an ex­per­i­men­tal and po­lit­i­cal­ly en­gaged artist. The ex­hi­bi­tion was or­ganized and cu­rat­ed by the Mu­se­um Lud­wig in Cologne, the Bar­bi­can in Lon­don, and the Zen­trum Paul Klee in Berne along with the Lille Métropole Mu­se­um of Mod­ern, Con­tem­po­rary and Out­sider Art.

Noguchi is a world-fa­mous de­sign icon who is known for his mid-cen­tu­ry cof­fee table de­sign and Akari lights. His work was shaped by an ex­pand­ed con­cep­tion of sculp­ture and the ques­tion of hu­man be­in­gs’ re­la­tion­ship to the earth, as well as his fas­ci­na­tion with ma­te­rials and tech­nol­o­gy. The ex­hi­bi­tion shows the artist as a great twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry sculp­tor. Noguchi’s think­ing was trans­gres­sive, tran­s­na­tio­n­al, and rad­i­cal­ly in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary in ev­ery re­gard. From the 1920s to the 1980s he cre­at­ed monu­ments with a po­lit­i­cal mes­sage, light ob­jects, stage sets, play­grounds, and gar­dens, al­ways in pur­suit of the con­nec­tion be­tween art and ev­ery­day life.

Cu­ra­tor: Ri­ta Ker­st­ing

Ex­hi­bi­tion

Green Mod­er­nism: The New View of Plants

Septem­ber 17, 2022 – Jan­uary 22, 2023

The re­cent “non­hu­man turn” has di­rect­ed our at­ten­tion to life other than hu­man, and the new pop­u­lar­i­ty of plants as home de­cor seems to be just one side ef­fect of this. The ex­hi­bi­tion Green Mod­er­nism: The New View of Plants leads us back in­to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry and how the arts ap­proached plant­s—not na­ture on a large scale, but in­di­vi­d­u­al plants. Read­ing Wal­ter Ben­jamin’s text “News about Flow­ers” from 1928, we wit­ness the rise of vi­su­al nov­el­ties: “Speed­ing the growth of a plant with time lapse or show­ing its form with 40-fold mag­ni­fi­ca­tion—in both cas­es a geys­er of new im­age worlds erupts from places of be­ing we would have least ex­pect­ed.” He was not the on­ly one fas­ci­nat­ed by mi­cropho­to­graphs of plants or time lapse im­ages. The movie the­aters were crowd­ed when Das Blu­men­wun­der (“The Mir­a­cle of Flow­ers”) made vis­i­ble plants’ live­li­ness in a whole new way, de­spite the fact that the “mir­a­cle” was based on lab­o­ra­to­ry re­cord­in­gs from test­ing the first ar­ti­fi­cial fer­til­iz­er.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast,&nb­sp;ad­vised by Suzanne Pierre

Ex­hi­bi­tion

HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig: An­ti­colo­nial In­ter­ven­tions

The eighth pro­ject in the ex­hi­bi­tion se­ries HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig em­barks on an an­ti­co­lo­nial jour­ney through the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. To­gether with the artists Daniela Or­tiz (b. 1985 in Pe­ru) and Pau­la Baeza Pail­amil­la (b. 1988 in Chile), we will take a crit­i­cal and cu­ri­ous look at ar­tis­tic po­si­tions from Latin Amer­i­ca. Which Latin Amer­i­can artists are part of the col­lec­tion? How did mod­er­nist artists (most of whom were from Eu­rope) re­pro­duce the ex­oti­ciz­ing gaze di­rect­ed at the Glob­al South? Which works need to be crit­i­cal­ly ques­tioned, and which ones of­fer coun­ter-mod­els?

Cu­ra­tor: Joanne Ro­driguez

Ex­hi­bi­tion

2022 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize: Frank Bowl­ing

Novem­ber 16, 2022 – Fe­bruary 12, 2023

Frank Bowl­ing (*1934 in Bar­ti­ca, Guya­na) is the re­cipi­ent of the 2022 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize. The award cer­e­mony will take place on Novem­ber 15, 2022 at 6:30 p.m., on the eve of Art Cologne 2022.

The de­ci­sion was made by the ju­ry con­sist­ing of Zoé Whit­ley, di­rec­tor of the Chisen­hale Gallery in Lon­don, and the board mem­bers of the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst: Mayen Beck­mann (chair­wo­m­an), Gabriele Bi­er­baum, Sabine Du­Mont Schütte, Yil­maz Dziewior (di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig), Jörg En­gels (trea­sur­er), and Robert Müller-Grünow.

Guest ju­ror Zoé Whit­ley stat­ed about the se­lec­tion of the 2022 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize win­n­er: "Frank Bowl­ing's paint­in­gs and crit­i­cal writ­in­gs have noth­ing short of re­defined the pos­si­bil­i­ties of paint for the past six de­cades. The 2021 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize recog­nis­es a re­s­o­lute and unique­ly in­no­va­tive fig­ure in the his­to­ry of ab­s­tract paint­ing. Span­n­ing lived ex­pe­ri­ence in Guya­na, Bri­tain and the Unit­ed States, Bowl­ing's oeu­vre pre­serves his­to­ries in pig­ment, wax and gel. With peer­less chro­mat­ic and ma­te­rial sen­si­bil­i­ties, Frank Bowl­ing estab­lish­es rules for him­self in the stu­dio which he in­vents, ad­heres to and then dis­rupts with a sub­se­quent se­ries of ut­ter­ly new rules and pa­ram­e­ters for the pic­ture plane. His is a com­plex thought pro­cess ex­e­cut­ed on can­vas, re­spond­ing to the long tra­di­tion of paint­ing in a con­sis­tent­ly dy­nam­ic man­n­er."

Ex­hi­bi­tion

Voiceover: Fe­lice Bea­to in Ja­pan

Fe­bruary 19 – June 12, 2022
Präsen­ta­tion im Fo­to­raum

In 1863, the pho­to­g­ra­pher Fe­lice Bea­to (*1832, Venice; †1909, Flo­rence) came to Ja­pan and start­ed a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio in Yoko­ha­ma. His staged genre pho­to­graphs of Ja­pa­nese peo­ple in tra­di­tio­n­al cloth­ing were print­ed in large edi­tions and were pop­u­lar among trav­el­ers to Ja­pan. His port­fo­lio al­so in­clud­ed pho­to­graphs of pro­mi­nent land­s­capes and trav­el routes which served as sou­venirs. The pho­to­graphs could be purchased di­rect­ly at his stu­dio as in­di­vi­d­u­al prints or bound in pre­cious lac­quered al­bums. Based on the clas­sic art of Ja­pa­nese wood­cuts, the fili­gree hand col­or­ing in par­tic­u­lar lends th­ese pic­tures a spe­cial charm. Ja­pa­nese wood­cut artists skill­ful­ly ap­plied trans­lu­cent wa­ter­col­or to the pho­to­graphs. Bea­to had pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a war pho­to­g­ra­pher in the Crimean War and dur­ing the In­dian Re­bel­li­on of 1857, and as an ar­chi­tec­tu­ral pho­to­g­ra­pher of pro­mi­nent monu­ments in the Mid­dle East be­fore go­ing on to sell his pho­to­graphs in Yoko­ha­ma. His pho­to­graphs of Ja­pan can now be found around the world, in­clud­ing in the pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tion of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig.

Cu­ra­tors: Miri­am Szwast and Meike Deil­mann

Raghu­bir Singh: Kolka­ta

Ju­ly 9 – Novem­ber 6, 2022
Pho­tog­ra­phy Room Pre­sen­ta­tion

The pho­to­g­ra­pher Raghu­bir Singh (*1942, Jaipur; †1999, New York) re­turned to Kol­ka­ta re­peat­ed­ly over a pe­ri­od of ten years to cre­ate a com­plex and mul­ti­lay­ered pho­to­graph­ic por­trait of the ci­ty. Hav­ing grown up in Jaipur, the cap­i­tal of the In­dian state of Ra­jasthan, Singh vis­it­ed Kol­ka­ta for the first time in 1975 be­fore he moved to Hong Kong and Paris; lat­er he lived in Lon­don and New York. In his street views in par­tic­u­lar, Singh con­dens­es Kol­ka­ta’s varied im­pres­sions in­to pho­to­graphs of im­pres­sive col­or and com­po­si­tion. Singh saw th­ese col­ors as char­ac­teris­tic of the ge­og­ra­phy and cul­ture of In­dia. He used them to di­rect the view­er’s at­ten­tion across the en­tire pic­ture so that the fore­ground and back­ground of­ten ap­pear as if on a sin­gle plane. In this way, the dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal lay­ers are equal­ly rep­re­sent­ed in the pho­to­graph. Singh’s pho­to­graphs are a cos­mopol­i­tan’s ho­mage to a cos­mopol­i­tan ci­ty. The pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tures twelve pho­to­graphs from the se­ries Kol­ka­ta which are part of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig col­lec­tion.

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach

 

 

Walde Huth: Ma­te­rial and Fashion

De­cem­ber 3, 2022 – March 12, 2023
Pho­tog­ra­phy Room Pre­sen­ta­tion

In 2020 the Mu­se­um Lud­wig was able to ac­quire over 250 works by the pho­to­g­ra­pher Walde Huth (1923–2011). She came to fame with her fashion pho­to­graphs of 1950s haute cou­ture in Paris and Flo­rence. Her port­fo­lio al­so in­clud­ed ad­ver­tis­ing pho­to­graphs for man­u­fac­tur­ers of vel­vet, stock­in­gs, and fur­ni­ture. In the be­gin­n­ing of her ca­reer she rare­ly used col­or pho­tog­ra­phy, even though she had be­come fa­miliar with its tech­ni­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties ear­ly on from her work in the de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment for col­or pho­tog­ra­phy at Ag­fa in Wolfen from 1943 to 1945. But when she did use it, she tru­ly cele­brat­ed col­or. Those who were able to vis­it the strong-willed Cologne na­tive to­ward the end of her life of­ten told of the chaot­ic state of her apart­ment. Her pic­tures were al­so part of the chaos. In an in­ter­view Walde Huth once said: “I just tend to love im­pro­vised and not so per­fect or ster­ile things. I don’t like pol­ished gal­leries, where the pho­to­graphs are hung like that. A pic­ture can’t be ef­fec­tive that way.” This pre­sen­ta­tion aims to of­fer a sen­si­tive in­tro­duc­tion to Walde Huth based on th­ese new­ly ac­quired works.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast