2019 Pro­gram

This is our 2019 ex­hi­bi­tion pro­gram.

Jac Leirn­er
2019 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize

4/10 – 7/21/2019

In 2019, the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig is award­ing the Wolf­gang Hahn Prize to Jac Leirn­er. For many years now, the work of the Brazilian artist (b. 1961 in São Pau­lo, Brazil) has en­gaged in a sub­tle anal­y­sis of so­cial and rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al sys­tems. Found, of­ten in­dus­trial­ly pro­duced ev­ery­day ob­jects play an im­por­tant role here; fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of col­lect­ing, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, and clas­si­fy­ing, Leirn­er us­es them to cre­ate in­s­tal­la­tions, col­lages, and sculp­tures.

Fio­na Tan
GAAF

5/4 – 8/11/2019
Part of the Artist Meets Archive Se­ries

Artist and film­mak­er Fio­na Tan (b. 1966 in Pekan­baru, In­do­ne­sia, lives in Am­s­ter­dam, Nether­lands) will work with the archive of the Ag­fa ad­ver­tis­ing de­part­ment, which has been packed away in stor­age at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig for for­ty years. It in­cludes tens of thou­sands of pho­to­graphs, slides, and neg­a­tives col­lect­ed since the 1920s. The artist is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in the pro­mo­tio­n­al pho­tos tak­en with the le­g­endary Ag­fa­col­or film. In Dutch, the ti­tle of the ex­hi­bi­tion GAAF—an ana­gram of Ag­fa—means “neat” and al­ludes to the col­or­ful, staged world of the pho­to­graphs, which show the eu­pho­ria of the post­war “e­co­nom­ic mir­a­cle” in Ger­many.

Ex­hi­bi­tion

Fam­i­ly Ties
The Schröder Do­na­tion

7/13 – 9/29/2019

In the 1990s, a new art scene formed in Cologne: new gal­leries were opened by the likes of Chris­tian Nagel, the mag­azine Texte zur Kunst was found­ed, and an artist col­lec­tive ran the al­ter­na­tive ex­hi­bi­tion space Frie­sen­wall 120. The Rhine­land—in an in­ten­sive exchange with New York—de­vel­oped in­to one of the in­tel­lec­tu­al cen­ters of the de­cade. Alex­an­der Schröder fol­lowed th­ese de­vel­op­ments from Ber­lin. To­day Schröder’s col­lec­tion ex­em­pli­fies the idiosyn­crat­ic and sen­su­al side of the 1990s and 2000s, which were shaped by Con­cep­tu­al Art. It de­mon­s­trates the sig­ni­f­i­cance of artist groups and col­lab­o­ra­tions in chang­ing con­stel­la­tions at the time. Now Alex­an­der Schröder has do­nat­ed sub­s­tan­tial works from his col­lec­tion to the Mu­se­um Lud­wig by artists such as Kai Al­thoff, Cosi­ma von Bonin, Tom Burr, Lukas Duwen­hög­ger, Isa Gen­zken, and Danh Võ. The ex­hi­bi­tion will pre­sent them to the public along with works from the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion, with a fo­cus on art at the turn of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Ex­hi­bi­tion

HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig
Tran­s­cor­po­re­al­i­ties

9/21/2019 – 1/19/2020

Un­der the ti­tle Tran­s­cor­po­re­al­i­ties, the fifth ex­hi­bi­tion in the HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig se­ries is ded­i­cat­ed to the com­plex­i­ty of cor­po­re­al­i­ty. Cer­tain new ma­te­rial­ist and posthu­man­ist the­o­ries as­sume that all bodies are porous, open sys­tems that con­s­tant­ly in­terchange with other bodies and their en­vi­ron­ment. This idea of “tran­s­cor­po­re­al­i­ty” could al­so be ap­plied to the mu­se­um: in­stead of a hermet­ic fortress and tem­ple of an art-his­tor­i­cal canon, it can be un­der­s­tood as a perme­able body that defines and trans­forms it­self as a liv­ing or­gan­ism in a per­pe­t­u­al metabolic pro­cess through ex­ter­nal in­flu­ences. In this sense, the ex­hi­bi­tion will ac­ti­vate a tran­si­tio­n­al space of the mu­se­um: in­ter­na­tio­n­al artists and col­lec­tives will turn the foy­er in­to a nim­ble ex­hi­bi­tion space with a stage for per­for­mance, dance, ar­tis­tic re­search, dis­cus­sion, and dia­logue. All works and con­tri­bu­tions are linked by an ex­am­i­na­tion of cor­po­re­al pro­cess­es of trans­for­ma­tion and the perme­able boun­daries be­tween na­ture and cul­ture, hu­mans and machines, or in­di­vi­d­u­als and the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ex­hi­bi­tion

Wade Guy­ton

11/16/2019 – 3/1/2020

Born in 1972, the Amer­i­can artist Wade Guy­ton has cre­at­ed a con­cep­tu­al­ly con­sis­tent and re­fresh­ing­ly idiosyn­crat­ic oeu­vre for more than two de­cades. He is best known for his large-scale can­vas paint­in­gs made with a con­ven­tio­n­al ink­jet prin­t­er, with icon­ic mo­tifs such as flames, the let­ters X and U, and front pages of The New York Times web­site. Af­ter ac­quir­ing sev­er­al of the artist’s works for the col­lec­tion, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is host­ing a ma­jor sur­vey ex­hi­bi­tion in 2019 that will pre­sent his oeu­vre from the be­gin­n­ing of his ca­reer to his most re­cent works. Guy­ton plays a key role in the ar­tis­tic en­gage­ment with im­ages in the dig­i­tal age. He com­bines tra­di­tio­n­al vi­su­al me­dia, such as primed can­vas, with dig­i­tal print­ing pro­cess­es so that de­lib­er­ate de­gra­da­tions lead to aes­thet­i­cal­ly as­ton­ish­ing re­sults. On the oc­ca­sion of the ex­hi­bi­tion, a full ca­t­a­logue of the artist’s so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions will be pub­lished with texts by Jo­han­na Bur­ton, Yil­maz Dziewior, Michelle Kuo, and Ker­stin Stake­mei­er.

Ben­jamin Katz
Ber­lin Havel­höhe, 1960/61

Pho­tog­ra­phy Room Pre­sen­ta­tion

6/7 – 9/22/2019

Re­cent­ly, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig was able to ac­quire the im­por­tant se­ries of pho­to­graphs Ber­lin Hav­el­höhe (1960/61) by Ben­jamin Katz. Suf­fer­ing from tu­ber­cu­lo­sis, Katz spent one and a half years in the Hav­el­höhe hos­pi­tal in Ber­lin and pho­to­graphed the pa­tients’ dai­ly life as well as the hos­pi­tal grounds and build­in­gs, which were orig­i­nal­ly used by the Nazi Reich­sakademie for the Luft­waffe. The pho­to­graphs rep­re­sent a so­cial as well as an ar­tis­tic doc­u­ment, since they re­cord Katz’s be­gin­n­in­gs as a pho­to­g­ra­pher.

Lu­cia Mo­ho­ly
Writ­ing Pho­tog­ra­phy’s His­to­ry

Pho­tog­ra­phy Room Pre­sen­ta­tion

On the oc­ca­sion of the an­niv­er­sary of the Bauhaus, we will re­count how the pho­to­g­ra­pher Lu­cia Mo­ho­ly rewrote the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy. In ad­di­tion to her pho­to­graphs, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig archives in­clude let­ters that de­mon­s­trate her live­ly exchange with the pho­tog­ra­phy col­lec­tor and his­to­rian Erich Stenger. To­gether they planned to write a book about the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy. How­ev­er, the rise of the Nazis drove Mo­ho­ly in­to emi­gra­tion, while Stenger be­came a sought-af­ter ex­pert in the field in Ger­many. Mo­ho­ly ul­ti­mate­ly pub­lished A Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy on her own in Lon­don. The ex­hi­bi­tion will cov­er this work as well as the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Mo­ho­ly’s writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy.&nb­sp;