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, ad­vised by Suzanne Pierre

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), Pau­la Baeza Pail­amil­la (b. 1988 in Chile), Pa­lo­ma Ay­ala (b. 1980 in Mex­i­co) and Páv­el Agui­lar (b. 1989 in Hon­duras), 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

Frank Bowl­ing (*1934 in Bar­ti­ca, Guya­na) is the re­cipi­ent of the 2022 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize by Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig Köln. 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."