Pop-Up!
April 5th – August 23rd
Jülicher Strasse 97-109,
52070 Aachen, Germany
phone: (+49) 241 1807 104
fax: (+49) 241 1807 101
info [at] ludwigforum.de
April 5th – August 23rd, 2009, opening April 5th 2009, 12 h
Since the 1960s, the idea of Pop has marked a new age of staging and reflecting everyday life. The famous Pop artists of the 1960s like Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein are still counted among the “heroes” of the international art scene. But how relevant is pop art today? What is its importance for today’s audiences and artists? In how far are today’s working and living conditions comparable so that they lead to a similar “populist” approach? And not the least: What was the essence of Pop back then, how did it influence other genres and what role does its heritage play today?
The exhibition in the Ludwig Forum, one of the important international centres of pop art, examines in how far pop and pop art is still relevant in our times. The term Meta Pop has recently been used to re-discuss the self-referential aspect of pop culture. The overwhelming impact and mass consumption of images generated by television, advertising and movies since the late 1950s constitute a phenomenal impulse in contemporary art. Three topics are constantly returning in this discussion: the pure surface of things, the human condition and politics in a media society. The impact of the factual is central to an artistic and socio-political reflection. New formalisms and a retreat from the documentary surface towards a meta-reflection that defines realism as just as real as minimalism or modernist architecture lead to a new multiply broken reference to art, life and history.
A lot of previously unimaginable methods and technologies for generating new imageries have now become common standard in everyday life. Milestones of Pop Art have become museum pieces that, when seen from the distance, seem to provide little explosive power in view of today’s problems. But appearances are deceptive. Fashion and design feature bizarre mixtures of imagery from the 1960s to 1990s. The canonical has only survived as a style or attitude. The works and aesthetics of the artists participating in this exhibition deal with a differentiated perspective on the Here-and-Now and a reflection of pop phenomena that have lost their unbroken fascination since they are so encompassing that the tactic of appropriation, still effective in the 1980s, does no longer constitute a suitable way of setting oneself off from mainstream.
Participating artists;
From the collection: Jean Michel Basquiat, Martin Kippenberger, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Estes, Don Eddy, Duane Hanson, Robert Smithson, Suzan Pitt, Franz Gertsch, Chuck Close, John Ahearn, Lee Lozano, Nancy Graves, Lygia Clark, Gerhard Richter, Jonathan Borfsky, Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, Dan Perjovschi, Piero Manzoni, Claes Oldenburg, Ralph Goings, Robert Graham
Featuring: Haegue Yang, Sofia Hultén, Annette Wehrmann, Karø Goldt, Gabriel Kuri, Nairy Baghramian, Susanne Paesler, Danica Dakič, Yael Bartana.
The exhibition is supported by the Kunststiftung NRW and the Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung.
Additional program:
April 9th, 6.30 p.m.
Guided tour with Brigitte Franzen
May 5th, 6.30 p.m.
Artist talk with Suzan Pitt
June 4th, 6.30 p.m.
Presentation by Realities United, Jan and Tim Edler, Studio für Kunst, Architektur und Technologie Berlin
June 6th, 6.30 p.m
Lecture by Hans Nieswandt, DJ and author
August 20th, 6.30 p.m.
Lecture by Wolfang Ullrich “Der Künstler als Kunde des Kunstbetriebs”
Director: Dr. Brigitte Franzen
Opening Hours: Tue, Wed, Fr 12 a.m.-6 p.m., Thur 12 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat+ Sun 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Press Contact: Julia.Zeh@mail.aachen.de
