On the an­niv­er­sary year “2021: 1700 Years of Jew­ish Life in Ger­many,” the Mu­se­um Lud­wig has in­vit­ed the artist Boaz Kaiz­man (born in 1962 in Tel Aviv, has lived and worked in Cologne since 1993) to de­vel­op a new work. The video in­s­tal­la­tion Grü­nan­lage (Green Area) com­pris­es six­teen new videos in sev­en large pro­jec­tions across two walls. It will be pre­sent­ed in the large ex­hi­bi­tion hall at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig span­n­ing around 200 square me­ters.

Se­lect­ed pas­sages from in­di­vi­d­u­al videos can be heard in the ex­hi­bi­tion space; at the same time, vis­i­tors can lis­ten to the videos us­ing head­phones. Land­s­capes rep­re­sent a com­mon vi­su­al el­e­ment be­tween the works. Most of th­ese are green ar­eas in Cologne, places of func­tio­n­al and ur­ban­ized na­ture, and thus re­main in­de­fi­nite, be­tween ur­ban and na­t­u­ral space.

Kaiz­man bas­es his in­s­tal­la­tion on his own ex­pe­ri­ence. He is shown do­ing ev­ery­day ac­tiv­i­ties—on the way to his stu­dio, pre­par­ing meals, or jog­ging in the park. He al­so re­flects on the ar­tis­tic pro­cess by re­ca­pi­t­u­lat­ing his pre­vi­ous work from the the­mat­ic per­spec­tive of Jew­ish life in the past and pre­sent and in­te­grat­ing it in­to the in­s­tal­la­tion in the form of short quo­ta­tions. Thus, in a me­di­at­ed way, Jew­ish life in Ger­many be­comes the self-evi­dent cen­ter of Kaiz­man’s new work with­out be­ing its ex­plic­it top­ic. With his work, Kaiz­man in­quires in­to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of me­m­o­ry, the pres­ence of his­to­ry, and the form in which it is in­scribed in life sto­ries.

Peo­ple as varied as the phi­lo­so­pher Han­nah Arendt, the com­pos­er Yosef Tal, the art his­to­rian David Gal­loway, and the ac­tor Dov Glick­man ap­pear in the in­di­vi­d­u­al videos. Pie­ces of mu­sic with an ori­en­tal and Sar­di­nian as­pect, a ro­man­tic folk song, and klezmer mu­sic are part of the work. Another piece played in the video by hand werk, an ensem­ble for new mu­sic, turns out to be a po­em by Kaiz­man. The artist trans­formed it in­to mu­sic us­ing a text-to-speech pro­gram and MI­DI soft­ware, which con­verts dig­i­tal sig­nals in­to sounds. Yet the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is not an end in it­self for the artist. Rather, it shows that lan­guage is the ba­sis of all arts, in­clud­ing mu­sic and the vi­su­al arts.

The fo­cus of the in­s­tal­la­tion on lan­guage and lit­er­a­ture will be ex­pand­ed thanks to a part­n­er­ship with Ger­ma­nia Ju­dai­ca, a lo­cal li­brary on the his­to­ry of Ju­daism in Ger­many. At the in­vi­ta­tion of Boaz Kaiz­man, An­dreas Kilch­er, a lit­erary and cul­tu­r­al studies pro­fes­sor at ETH Zurich, se­lect­ed 1700 books of Ger­man-lan­guage Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture from Ger­ma­nia Ju­dai­ca. As an in­de­pen­dent el­e­ment of the ex­hi­bi­tion, th­ese are lo­cat­ed across from the video in­s­tal­la­tion on three shelves from the li­brary, along with ta­bles and chairs. Thus, Ger­ma­nia Ju­dai­ca, the largest Eu­ro­pean li­brary on the his­to­ry and cul­ture of Ger­man-lan­guage Ju­daism, will have a branch at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig for four months. With his ho­mage to the li­brary, Kaiz­man not on­ly points to the im­por­tance of writ­ing and books in Jew­ish cul­ture; he sees him­self as part of this tra­di­tion with his vi­su­al, lit­erary, and mu­si­cal work.

This ex­hi­bi­tion is part of a se­ries of events mark­ing 1700 years of Jew­ish life in Ger­many or­ganized by the as­so­ci­a­tion 321–2021: 1700 Jahre jüdisch­es Leben in Deutsch­land e.V. It is sup­port­ed by #2021JLID – Jüdisch­es Leben in Deutsch­land e.V. with fund­ing from the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of the In­te­ri­or, Build­ing and Com­mu­ni­ty.

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach

#M­LxBoazKaiz­man #2021JLID

What do we as­so­ci­ate with Pab­lo Pi­cas­so? And what as­so­ci­a­tions with him did the Ger­man peo­ple have in mind dur­ing the post-war years, when he was at the height of his fame? Far more than we do: This is the main idea of the ex­hi­bi­tion, which re­veals a for­got­ten breadth, ten­sion, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of th­ese ap­pro­pri­a­tions. It deals not on­ly with the artist, but with his au­di­ence, which in­ter­pret­ed Pi­cas­so’s art in very dif­fer­ent ways in the cap­i­tal­ist West and in the so­cial­ist East. The Ger­man Pi­cas­so was di­vid­ed, but this di­vi­sion al­so sti­m­u­lat­ed the re­cep­tion: Be­cause ev­ery­one ques­tioned his art, it had some­thing to say for ev­ery­one.

The ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures po­lit­i­cal works, such as the paint­ing Mas­sacre in Ko­rea (1951) from the Musée Pi­cas­so in Paris. Th­ese are shown along­side some 150 ex­hi­bits that re­flect the im­pact of Pi­cas­so’s work: ex­hi­bi­tion views, posters, ca­t­a­logues, press re­ports, let­ters, files, films, and tele­vi­sion re­ports, as well as a the­ater cur­tain from the Ber­lin­er Ensem­ble on which Ber­tolt Brecht had “the peace dove mil­i­tant of my brother Pi­cas­so” paint­ed.

Pi­cas­so served as a fig­ure­head and sym­bol for both sys­tems and in both Ger­man states. He was a mem­ber of the French Com­mu­nist Par­ty and sup­port­ed strug­gles for lib­er­a­tion as well as peace con­fer­ences. But he lived in the West and al­lowed bour­geois crit­ics to con­ven­tio­n­al­ize him as an apo­lit­i­cal ge­nius, “the mys­tery of Pi­cas­so.” Which works were shown un­der so­cial­ism, and which un­der cap­i­tal­ism? How was his work con­veyed? Did the West see on­ly the art, and the East his politics? And how did the artist view things him­self? Pi­cas­so, Shared and Di­vid­ed ex­amines the im­age that peo­ple took from Pi­cas­so’s pic­tures in the two Ger­manys. One fo­cus is Peter and Irene Lud­wig’s Pi­cas­so col­lec­tion, which re­mains one of the largest to this day. When the Lud­wigs made parts of it avai­l­able to the GDR, they in­creased the num­ber of works on view there by sev­er­al times.

Two new works were com­mis­sioned for the ex­hi­bi­tion. The ex­hi­bi­tion ar­chi­tec­ture de­signed by the artist Er­an Schaerf links the ex­hi­bits with­out hi­erarchi­cal­ly struc­tur­ing art­works and their so­cial use. Woo­d­en in­s­tal­la­tions, di­ag­o­n­al par­ti­tions, and the bare mu­se­um walls con­vey the im­pres­sion of a de­lib­er­ate in­com­plete­ness. In­di­vi­d­u­al ex­hi­bits re­main embedd­ed in their con­text, and the way in which we ap­pro­pri­ate them re­mains evi­dent. Peter Nestler’s film Pi­cas­so in Val­lau­ris was shot in Jan­uary 2020 to bring Pi­cas­so’s mu­ral War and Peace in­to the ex­hi­bi­tion. The film fo­cus­es on Pi­cas­so’s pro­duc­tion as well as his re­la­tion­ships and po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, and it looks at the peo­ple who live in Val­lau­ris to­day against this back­ground.

A ca­t­a­logue will be pub­lished in Ger­man and En­glish, ed­it­ed by Ju­lia Frie­drich, with texts by Yil­maz Dziewior, Ju­lia Frie­drich, Ber­nard Eisen­s­chitz, Ste­fan Rip­plinger, Hu­bert Brie­den, Ge­org Seeßlen, Gün­ter Jor­dan, Iliane Thie­mann, There­sa Nis­ters, Boris Po­fal­la, Thorsten Sch­nei­der, Ém­i­lie Bou­vard, and Sarah Jo­nas. Cologne 2021, 248 pages. 266 col­or il­lus­tra­tions, 22 x 28 cm, Ver­lag der Buch­hand­lung Walther König. 29.80 EUR (re­tail price), 25 EUR (mu­se­um price).

Cu­ra­tor: Ju­lia Frie­drich

The ex­hi­bi­tion re­ceived sub­s­tan­tial fund­ing from the Peter and Irene Lud­wig Foun­da­tion, the Kun­st­s­tif­tung NRW, the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Sci­ence of the State of North Rhine-West­phalia, and the Kul­turs­tif­tung der Län­der. Ad­di­tio­n­al gen­er­ous sup­port came from the Fre­unde des Wall­raf-Richartz-Mu­se­um und des Mu­se­um Lud­wig e.V., the REWE Group, and the Bern­er Group.

#M­Lx­Pi­cas­so

How proud and fierce she looks in Au­gust San­der’s pho­to! The wo­m­an we see here is the pain­ter Mar­ta Hege­mann, who used to be a teach­er. Her blouse and neck­lace look tousled, and she has all sorts of sym­bols paint­ed on her face. When Mar­ta Hege­mann paint­ed two mu­rals for a chil­dren’s room three years lat­er, it was again Au­gust San­der who doc­u­ment­ed her work and the re­sult with his cam­era.

The paint­in­gs were shown in 1929 in the ex­hi­bi­tion Raum und Wand­bild at the Köl­nisch­er Kun­stverein. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they have since been lost. Thanks to San­der’s pho­tos, we know what they looked like—at least in black and white—and can try to re­cre­ate the chil­dren’s room. In this pre­sen­ta­tion for chil­dren, we use pho­to­graphs to learn about an un­con­ven­tio­n­al wo­m­an who al­so paint­ed for chil­dren.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast

#M­Lx­Au­gu­s­tAnd­Mar­ta

For the third edi­tion of the se­ries Schultze Pro­jects, Min­er­va Cue­vas (*1975 in Mex­i­co Ci­ty) will de­vel­op a new site-spe­cif­ic work for the main stair­case of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig. The name of the se­ries re­fers to Ber­nard Schultze and his wife Ur­su­la (Schultze-Bluhm), whose es­tate is ma­n­aged by the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, and in whose me­m­o­ry ev­ery two years since 2017 an artist has been in­vit­ed to cre­ate a large-scale work for the pro­mi­nent front wall of the stair­way to the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion.

Min­er­va Cue­vas is known for her re­search-based pro­jects, which she ex­hi­bits in the form of in­s­tal­la­tions, per­for­mance, video, and paint­ing. She is in­ter­est­ed in eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and their so­cio-po­lit­i­cal in­ter­re­la­tions. Cue­vas of­ten re­fers to the spe­cif­ic con­text in which her work is cre­at­ed. For ex­am­ple, for the ex­hi­bi­tion mark­ing the for­ti­eth an­niv­er­sary of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, she de­vel­oped a work that ref­er­enced the Peter and Irene Lud­wig Foun­da­tion, which was estab­lished in 1982 un­der the name Lud­wig Stif­tung für Kunst und In­ter­na­tio­nale Ver­stän­di­gung GmbH (Lud­wig Foun­da­tion for Art and In­ter­na­tio­n­al Un­der­s­tand­ing). She de­signed an in­s­tal­la­tion made of a black rec­tan­gu­lar woo­d­en frame with red, yel­low, and blue ac­cents, whose com­po­si­tion re­called Pi­et Mon­drian’s ab­s­tract paint­ing Tableau I. Its purchase was very con­tro­ver­sial at the time, and to­day it is one of the high­lights of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig’s col­lec­tion. In this in­s­tal­la­tion, sim­i­lar to some of her other works, the artist deals with the po­ten­tial and ef­fects of ar­tis­tic prac­tice for so­ci­e­ty. In this sense, Min­er­va Cue­vas sees art as an ac­tive con­tri­bu­tion to so­cial changes. She us­es paint­ing more as a means to an end rather than as an ex­am­i­na­tion of the me­di­um’s con­di­tions and rules. For her large-scale mu­rals she some­times us­es the lan­guage of ad­ver­tis­ing, in­clud­ing the lo­gos of spe­cif­ic brands, which she sub­s­tan­tial­ly al­ters. Fol­low­ing her crit­i­cal ap­proach, with her paint­ing Min­er­va Cue­vas il­lus­trates the neg­a­tive ef­fects of con­sump­tion and the eco­nom­ic ori­en­ta­tion of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty on so­ci­e­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment.

Min­er­va Cue­vas’s so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions in­clude: Disi­den­cia, Mishkin Gallery, New York (2019); No Room to Play, daad­ga­lerie, Ber­lin (2019); Dis­sidên­cia, Galpão VB – As­so­ci­ação Cul­tu­r­al Video­brasil, São Pau­lo (2018); Fine Lands, Dal­las Mu­se­um of Art (2018); Min­er­va Cue­vas, Museo de la Ci­u­dad de Méx­i­co (2012); Land­in­gs, Corn­er­house, Manch­es­ter (2012); S·­COOP, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Lon­don (2010); Min­er­va Cue­vas, Van Abbe­mu­se­um, Eind­hoven (2008); Pheno­m­e­na, Kun­sthalle Basel (2007); Das Ex­per­i­ment 6: MVC Biotech­no­lo­gies – Für ein natür­lich­es In­ter­face, Se­ces­sion, Vien­na (2001); On So­ci­e­ty, MC Kunst, Los An­ge­les (2007); Egal­ité, Le Grand Café – Cen­tre d’art con­tem­po­rain, Saint Nazaire (2007); Sch­warz­fahr­er Are My Heroes, daad­ga­lerie, Ber­lin (2004); Me­jor Vi­da Corp, Ta­mayo Mu­se­um, Mex­i­co Ci­ty (2000).

Cu­ra­tor: Yil­maz Dziewior

#M­Lx­Cue­vas #schultze­pro­jects

The sev­enth edi­tion of the ex­hi­bi­tion se­ries HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig deals with the Ja­pa­nese avant-garde in the 1960s from to­day’s per­spec­tive. What de­vel­op­ments in the post­war pe­ri­od did artists re­act to at the time? What mo­ti­vat­ed their sen­sa­tio­n­al public per­for­mances? And how do to­day con­tem­po­rary artists re­late to this his­tor­i­cal move­ment? The Ja­pa­nese avant-garde emerged fol­low­ing the oc­cu­pa­tion of the coun­try by the Unit­ed States Army (1945–52). It is close­ly linked to so­ci­e­tal shifts dur­ing this time: the de­moc­ra­ti­za­tion of Ja­pan un­der the fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence of the Unit­ed States was ac­com­panied by a surge in eco­nom­ic growth, so­cial up­hea­vals, and a new cul­tu­r­al iden­ti­ty.

The po­lice re­spond­ed with vi­o­lence to re­sis­tance and de­mon­s­tra­tions by stu­dents and trade unions. Mean­while, pre­pa­ra­tions were un­der­way for the 1964 Sum­mer Olympics in Tokyo and Ex­po ’70 in Os­a­ka, which were meant to pre­sent the coun­try as an in­no­va­tive and at­trac­tive place.

The ex­hi­bi­tion fea­tures pho­to­graphs of ac­tions and per­for­mances by vari­ous artist col­lec­tives in the 1960s from the col­lec­tion of the M+ Mu­se­um in Hong Kong. At the same time, the spon­ta­neous, hu­mor­ous, and some­times rad­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions by the Chim↑Pom col­lec­tive (found­ed in Tokyo in 2005) and cur­rent works by Ko­ki Ta­na­ka (b. 1975) cre­ate a dia­logue be­tween gen­er­a­tions. Groups such as Neo Da­da, Hi Red Cen­ter, and Ze­ro Di­men­sion protest­ed against the sta­tion­ing of the Unit­ed States Army in Ja­pan, dis­crim­i­na­tion against mi­grants. To­day Chim↑Pom and Ko­ki Ta­na­ka ex­plore the po­ten­tial of re­sis­tance in their own ways: their works deal with per­so­n­al life paths, politics, re­li­gion and com­mu­ni­ty, pover­ty and re­pres­sion, as well as me­m­ories of the war and Fukushi­ma.

Cu­ra­tor: Na­na Tazuke

#HEREAND­NOW #fo­ran­da­gainst

Mar­cel Oden­bach is the re­cipi­ent of the twen­ty-sev­enth Wolf­gang Hahn Prize from the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig. On be­half of the ju­ry con­sist­ing of Su­sanne Pf­ef­fer, di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um für Mod­erne Kunst in Frank­furt am Main; Yil­maz Dziewior, di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig; and the board mem­bers of the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst, guest ju­ror Su­sanne Pf­ef­fer ex­plains the com­mit­tee’s de­ci­sion:

“For de­cades, Mar­cel Oden­bach has re­s­o­lute­ly ex­amined con­struc­tions of cul­tu­r­al iden­ti­ty and gen­der in his draw­in­gs, col­lages, videos, and in­s­tal­la­tions. His start­ing point is not on­ly the Self, but the Other. Oden­bach cre­ates works that—­ex­per­i­men­tal in form and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly found­ed in con­ten­t—­ex­pose his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions be­tween co­lo­nial­ism and glob­al­iza­tion and make the vi­o­lence of the nor­ma­tive and rep­re­sen­ta­tion tan­gi­ble.” The tech­nique of col­lag­ing is evi­dent in Oden­bach’s Sch­nittvor­la­gen, which will be ac­quired for the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion. Th­ese are both an im­age archive and at the same time the cen­tral ba­sis for the artist’s work, and will be ex­hi­b­it­ed to the public for the first time. Th­ese works, which be­gan in 1990, con­sist of over 100 sheets of pa­per, most­ly in A3 for­mat. The pho­to col­lages are es­sen­tial to Oden­bach’s con­cep­tu­al ap­proach and of­fer mu­se­um vis­i­tors new in­sights in­to the work­ing meth­ods of this year’s re­cipi­ent of the Wolf­gang Hahn Prize.

Mar­cel Oden­bach (b. 1953 in Cologne) lives and works in Cologne, Ber­lin, and Cape Coast, Gha­na. His lat­est in­sti­tu­tio­n­al so­lo show, Mar­cel Oden­bach: Es bren­nt at the Kun­sthalle Nürn­berg, will be on view un­til Jan­uary 10, 2021. The artist had his first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion while a stu­dent, in 1978 at de Ap­pel in Am­s­ter­dam. This was fol­lowed by nu­mer­ous so­lo shows at, in­ter alia, the Kun­st­mu­se­um Bonn (2013), the Tel Aviv Mu­se­um of Art (2016), and the Kun­sthalle Wien (2017). Oden­bach par­ti­ci­pat­ed in doc­u­men­ta 8 in 1988, the Shar­jah Bi­en­nial 7 in 2005, the Kochi-Muziris Bi­en­nale in 2012, and the Bu­san Bi­en­nale in 2018. He has taught film and video at the Kun­s­takademie Düs­sel­dorf since 2010.

#wolf­gang­hah­n­prize #M­Lx­O­den­bach