Mark Dion @ Museum Ludwig Köln

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig col­lec­tion in­cludes the most im­por­tant artists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and con­tem­po­rary art. The works of mod­er­nism and art from 1945 to 1970 are ar­ranged chrono­log­i­cal­ly from the up­per­most to the mid­dle floor. The con­tem­po­rary art in the stair­well and on the base­ment lev­el forms the back­bone and foun­da­tion of the mu­se­um, look­ing in­to the past and the fu­ture. At the same time, the col­lec­tion pre­sents the di­verse me­dia and con­cep­tu­al man­i­fes­ta­tions of con­tem­po­rary art, which do not fol­low a firm­ly estab­lished canon and can­not be cat­e­go­rized in­to styles.

Ev­ery two years the Mu­se­um Lud­wig pre­sents a new se­lec­tion of con­tem­po­rary art from its col­lec­tion. This edi­tion, run­n­ing from Au­gust 10, 2023 till Au­gust 31, 2025, will fo­cus on dif­fer­ent con­cepts of time and ways in which artists han­dle the top­ic in their work. Many artists draw at­ten­tion to the fact that art is ex­pe­ri­enced in the pre­sent, while al­so ques­tion­ing me­m­o­ry, re­mem­brance, and his­to­ri­og­ra­phy. The pre­sen­ta­tion is framed by “val­ue of time” as a con­cep­t—a so­cial­ly de­ter­mined val­ue on which ab­s­tract, quan­ti­fi­able time is based.

The start­ing point is Wal­ter Ben­jamin’s haunt­ing im­age from 1940 of the “an­gel of his­to­ry,” with which he de­scribed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween past, pre­sent, and fu­ture. This estab­lished the con­cept of a crit­i­cal his­to­ri­og­ra­phy that orig­i­nates from eco­nom­ic pa­ram­e­ters. Vari­ous facets of this con­cept are re­flect­ed by the ex­hibit­ed works, in which tem­po­ral­i­ty takes ef­fect, the past is re­flect­ed in its re­la­tion­ship to the pre­sent, and fu­ture events are an­ti­ci­pat­ed.

Fea­tured artists: Tho­mas Bayr­le, Alighiero Boet­ti, Frank Bowl­ing, Miri­am Cahn, Mark Dion, Maria Eich­horn, Harun Faroc­ki, Guan Xiao, Wade Guy­ton, Lubai­na Himid, Ull Hohn, Re­bec­ca Horn, Anne Imhof, Boaz Kaiz­man, Car­o­lyn Lazard, Jochen Lem­pert, Pau­line Mʼbarek, Ker­ry James Mar­shall, Park McArthur, Os­car Muril­lo, Fü­sun Onur, Asim­i­na Paradis­sa, Robert Rauschen­berg, Cameron Row­land, Ju­lia Sch­er, An­dreas Schulze, An­dreas Siek­mann, Di­a­mond Stingi­ly, Danh Vo, Lois Wein­berg­er, Haegue Yang

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach