Exhibitions

Franz West

Auto-Theatre

The Austrian artist Franz West (born in 1947 in Vienna) is one of the foremost artists of the times. The exhibition at Museum Ludwig features over 40 pieces and constellations of works from the period 1972 to the present, and allows the visitor to experience the sheer complexity and uniqueness of his creative output. From his first Adaptives (Passstücke) and collages in the Seventies, to his papier-mâché sculptures, furniture and site-specific installations, and on to his picture walls from the Eighties and his latest sculptures for public spaces, this retrospective underscores the extraordinary creative energy that pulses through his work.

West began to develop his famous Adaptives in 1974, just as the slogan "Everyone is an artist" was getting popular. Reacting to the passivity of simply viewing art at an exhibition, Franz West entrusted the visitors with these snow white, mostly organic forms made of plaster, papiermâché or metal so as to encourage a new, active relationship between viewer and artwork. This new, interactive approach left a lasting mark on the younger generations and new tendencies in the nineties, such as "Design Art" and "Relational Aesthetics".

Cologne has played an important part in Franz West's career. His Adaptives were presented for the first time at the exhibition Westkunst in 1981, where they prompted international interest. In 1998 the artist was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig, which led to the purchase of his "Kantine" for the museum. This was followed in 2006 by the purchase of the work "Plural". Consequently the retrospective Auto-Theatre is the next logical step in the museum's ongoing interest in Franz West's oeuvre. Franz West will personally arrange the works in Cologne, combining old and new and thus creating new contexts.

Curators: Kasper König, Katia Baudin

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Donnerstags um 16 Uhr und sonntags um 15 Uhr finden regelmäßig öffentliche Führungen statt.

Programme

The exhibition is accompanied by talks.

Catalogue

To mark the exhibition a richly-documented catalogue is published by DuMont Verlag, complete with numerous illustrations, archive material, a conversation with Franz West, and a wide range of texts.

Partners

Supported by
Kunststiftung NRW

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Additional current Exhibitions

• Russian avant-garde / project series, Museum Ludwig, Köln
• Exhibition series “Saw it, Loved it”
• Wade Guyton
• Moving Images. Artists & Video / Film
• Photographs from 19th Century Japan and China
• Roy Lichtenstein. Kunst als Motiv