Contact: Anne Niermann / Leonie Pfennig Press and Public Relations Tel. +49 (0)221 221-23491 or +49 (0)221 221-23003 niermann@museum-ludwig.de pfennig@museum-ludwig.de Exhibitions 2014 (Subject to change) Oscar Tuazon 02/15 07/13/2014 Opening: 02/14, Press reception: 02/13 Pierre Huyghe 04/11 07/13/2014 Opening: 04/10, Press reception: 04/10 Intractable and Untamed: Documentary Photography around 1979 The Museum of Photography: A Revision Andrea Büttner 09/05/2014 03/15/2015 Opening: 09/04, Press reception: 09/03 LUDWIG GOES POP. Pictures of a Century Collection 10/02/2014 01/11/2015 Opening: 10/01, Press reception: 09/30
Oscar Tuazon 02/15 07/13/2014 Opening: 02/14, Press reception: 02/13 Wood, metal, stone, and concrete are Oscar Tuazon s working materials. Inspired by the do-it-yourself aesthetics from the history of art and building, his constructions range between sculpture and architecture. They emerge in exterior and interior spaces, and at first glance appear bulky and useless. Some, however, are also interactive and can be converted and used. Born in the United States in 1975, the artist is interested in processes of creation: he sees collective physical labor, effort, and communication as part of his work. It is also characterized by Tuazon s exploration of the history of art. His pieces bring together ideas from Land Art and Minimal Art; their content, aligned with that of Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, or Gordon Matta- Clark, give a new twist to the discourse on space, material, and work in contemporary art. The site-specific project at the Museum Ludwig extends over two floors of the large staircase, where the visitor encounters the movable architectural elements of a private house. A catalogue with texts by Anna Brohm, Philipp Kaiser, and Antek Walczak is being published in conjunction with the exhibition. Curators: Philipp Kaiser und Anna Brohm Photo credit: Oscar Tuazon, Installation view Kunsthalle Bern, 2010, Photo: Dominique Uldry, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich Pierre Huyghe 04/11 07/13/2014 Opening: 04/10, Press reception: 04/10 A female figure skater who traces abstract figures on black skating rink ice; a white dog with pink-colored paws that walks through the exhibition galleries; ants and spiders that are left to linger discreetly in particular corners: the French artist Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962 in Paris) invites the viewer to a magical journey of discovery through his work of the last twenty years. Huyghe transforms the everyday into something extraordinary. The relationship between reality and fiction, nature and culture, life and death, construction and decomposition are recurring leitmotifs in his work. These themes are universal, challenge conventions and ideals, and speak to our collective memory. The exhibition brings together fifty works and projects. Combining objects and installations, photographs, films, drawings, performances, and living beings, the artist creates similar to his much-acclaimed installation for documenta 13 a type of ecosystem with its own rhythm of life. An exhibition organized by the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d art moderne, Paris, in association with the Museum Ludwig, Köln and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A catalogue in English/German is being published Curator: Katia Baudin Photo credit: Pierre Huyghe, Untilled, 2011 2012, installation view documenta 13, Kassel, 2012, Pierre Huyghe, Courtesy Galerie Marian Goodman, New York/Paris; Esther Schipper, Berlin.
Intractable and Untamed: Documentary Photography around 1979 In times of sweeping societal transformations and crises, photography becomes an important medium. After all, as an image of reality, the photograph has an immediate impact that the photo theorist Roland Barthes, in his book Camera Lucida (1979), called untamed. It is this direct connection to reality, The awakening of intractable reality, that makes the documentary as well as the artistic approach significant in periods of radical change. This applies, for instance, to the year 1979 the beginning of the so-called crisis decades, the consequences of which even today have an effect on economic and political conditions worldwide. Artists and photographers observed and documented the global change over longer periods of time, as a general rule, where they lived. The exhibition brings together photo series by fifteen photographers and artists such as Robert Adams, Ishiuchi Miyako, Ute Klophaus, Candida Höfer, and Boris Mikhailov. The documentary approach is not only revealed in the photographs themselves but can also be seen in their use: to whom are they addressed, where and how were they first published? Curator: Barbara Engelbach Photo credit: Robert Adams, from the series: Our Lives and Our Children, 1981, silver gelatin, 74 parts, each 31.50 x 22.50 cm, Robert Adams The Museum of Photography: A Revision For decades a specter has haunted feuilletons and podium discussions: the museum of photography. We need it, say advocates, really? counter opponents. The collector Erich Stenger (1878 1958) never regarded photographs as art but, rather, as evidence of technology. His vision for their presentation, however, was an institutional one: even early on he campaigned for a museum of photography, for which he systematically collected and developed a detailed organizational plan. Today his collection is part of the photography department of the Museum Ludwig that is, of an art museum. The exhibition features the Stenger holdings in their entire breadth and submits his museum concept to a revision. On view are daguerreotypes, framed in jewel-like fashion, caricatures of photography, albums, letters and photographs dating from the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Aware that museums and archives shape our cultural memory, the institutional forms of presenting the objects will be playfully explored: just as Stenger had envisaged them for the museum of photography and as they are conceivable in an art museum of the twenty-first century. Curator: Miriam Halwani Photo credit: Charles Scolik, Mungo's Mussestunden, from the "Photographischen Rundschau, 1887, 21,60 x 14,90 cm, FH 2271, Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln / Sabrina Walz
Andrea Büttner 09/05/2014 03/15/2015 Opening: 09/04, Press reception: 09/03 The art of Andrea Büttner lies in shifting the unnoticed into the light. She will demonstrate this in an exhibition that she has developed for the Museum Ludwig. For nearly a decade now the artist has investigated concepts loaded with religious and cultural meaning, such as poverty, shame, and charity in her videos, woodcuts, photographs, and objects. While she certainly probes these issues in a fundamental manner, she does so not from a know-it-all standpoint but, rather, with an appropriate simplicity. For instance, with her use of the woodcut she employs an artistic medium that had its zenith centuries ago. Büttner is interested in the primitive quality of the woodcut. She preserves its humble character in the reduction of color and line and in the frugalness of its representation. But she prints her sheets in unusually large sizes. These modest woodcuts can take on immodest proportions. The installation of the works in space is thus an act that is just as important to Büttner as the making of the individual works themselves. Büttner, for whom the margins are more interesting than the centers, and who wants to draw attention to the inconspicuous, likes to emphasize the corners and the blind spots in her spaces. For this reason we have put the museum s most spacious hall at Büttner s disposal because she has the ability to make the small appear large and the large appear small. Curator: Julia Friedrich Photo credit: Andrea Büttner, installation view documenta 13, Neue Galerie, Kassel 2012 LUDWIG GOES POP. Pictures of a Century Collection 10/02/2014 01/11/2015 Opening: 10/01, Press reception: 09/30 Thanks to Peter and Irene Ludwig, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne holds one of the internationally most significant collections of American Pop Art. In addition to the Cologne holdings, other parts of this collection are preserved at the mumok in Vienna, the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, as well as at the Ludwig museums in Budapest, St. Petersburg, and Beijing. Opening in fall 2014 LUDWIG GOES POP brings together for the first time around 150 key works by the leading figures of this art movement from the above-mentioned museums and in the process expands the historical picture of this world-class private collection. When Peter Ludwig first encountered a Pop Art sculpture by George Segal at MoMA in the mid-1960s, the collector, who together with his wife had up to then collected chiefly antique and medieval art, was shocked. Shortly thereafter, however, both became enthusiastic collectors of these then-current works. Tom Wesselman s Landscape No. 2, featuring a VW bug cut out from an advertising poster and mounted on canvas, was their first purchase; soon followed key works by Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. These artists belonged to the same generation as the Ludwigs; they represented modern life, and the couple visited many of them directly in their studios.
Many works came from the renowned Scull and Kraushaar collections to Ludwig, a few derived from the holdings of the Wella manufacturer Karl Ströher in Darmstadt. In 1969, following documeta 4, the Ludwigs bought works directly from the exhibition, including M-Maybe A Girl s Picture by Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg s Soft Washstand, Rauschenberg s Wall Street, George Segal s Restaurant Window I, and Tom Wesselmann s Great American Nude No. 98. That same year the Ludwigs presented their collection for the first time in Cologne, at the then Wallraf- Richartz-Museum. The media and the public responded enthusiastically to the exhibition, and it attracted around 200,000 visitors. In consequence Pop Art became the Museum Ludwig s signature tune. The exhibition will subsequently be shown at the mumok in Vienna. A comprehensive catalogue is being published in conjunction with the show. Curator: Stephan Diederich Photo credit: James Rosenquist, Untitled (Joan Crawford says ) 1964, Sammlung Ludwig, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2013, Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln