The exhibition “Pop Up!” goes back to the roots of the Ludwig Forum and presents key works of the museum’s collection alongside the current positions of nine contemporary artists.
Ludwig stands for Pop. Starting in the 1960s, the Aachen collector Peter Ludwig acquired large bodies of works by prominent Pop-Artists. In its collection, the Ludwig Forum in Aachen houses works with cult status, like the hyperrealistic figures of Duane Hanson, the “Supermarket Lady” and the “Homeless Group”, or the photorealistic paintings of Chuck Close. The exhibition features works from the Ludwig collection by Jean Michel Basquiat, Martin Kippenberger, Richard Estes and Don Eddy, as well as Robert Smithson’s photographs of Spiral Jetty and Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus Theater. In addition, Franz Gertsch’s “Medici”, works by John Ahearn, Lee Lozano, Piero Manzoni, Nancy Graves and Lygia Clark have been reinstalled in the rooms of the Ludwig Forum.
This presentation of the collection, in itself conceived of as a long-term installation, is complemented for the duration of this exhibition with works by contemporary artists who, like the Pop Generation of the 1960s and their successors, also have a special focus on the issue of reality in art. The contrast of artistic positions exposes not only the perpetuation of an artistic tradition, albeit with a critical and ironical detachment, but also the changing approach of the different generations towards the same issue. New Formalism and a retreat from the documentary surface towards a meta-reflection that defines realism as being just as real as minimalism or modernist architecture – all make for a new, multi-refracted reference. The realism of political propaganda exemplified in the work of Yael Bartana, the apparent drastic nature of vigilante justice featured in Annette Wehrmann’s work, neo-minimalism meets neo-nouveau-realism in the case of Gabriel Kuri, or the hyperrealistic paintings of Susanne Paesler represent these new artistic positions.
Curated by Dr. Brigitte Franzen
Pop Up!, Selected works in the Exhibition
