Produced on the occasion of the exhibition at Museum Ludwig, Köln, March–June 2008. The Cologne Progressives were a group of artists who came together in Cologne, Germany in the 1920s. The artists in this exhibition, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle and Gerd Arntz, were its core members. In the aftermath of the horrors of the First World War, like many Germans, these artists desired radical social and political change. Supporters of socialism and workers’ rights, the Progressives sought to unite art and politics. Their aim was to embody change with both the subject matter depicted and in the way they painted their artworks.

“Betye Saar’s work occupies a pivotal position in American art. Her assemblages from the 1960s and early 1970s interweave issues of race, politics, and supernatural belief systems with her personal history. Having grown up in a racially segregated society, Saar has long held that art can transcend our darkest moments and deepest fears. Today, the emergence of a new generation of artists mining her poignant legacy attests to how profoundly Saar has changed the course of American art. The 2020 Wolfgang Hahn Prize not only acknowledges her extraordinary achievements and influence, but also recognizes the need to revisit how the history of art in recent decades has been written.”—Christophe Cherix, Guest juror of the Wolfgang-Hahn-Preis 2020

Produced on the occasion of Jac Leirner being awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Preis 2019 at the Museum Ludwig, Köln.

Leirner cre­ates in­s­tal­la­tions, col­lages, and sculp­tures using found, of­ten in­dus­trial­ly man­u­fac­tured ev­ery­day ob­jects, ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of col­lect­ing, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, and clas­si­fy­ing play an im­por­tant role in her work. This re­sults in dense, of­ten min­i­mal­ist works that play with the aes­thet­ic, rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al, and so­cio-cul­tu­r­al lev­els of mean­ing of the ob­jects.

More information on the exhibition and award can be found here.

Established in 1994 in honour of the Cologne art collector Wolfgang Hahn, the Wolfgang Hahn Prize has since been awarded annually to an exceptional, internationally known artist who is nonetheless not yet well known in Germany. In 2015 the prize was awarded for the first time to two artists, R.H. Quaytman and Michael Krebber. This publication honours the prizewinners, both of whom approach the medium of painting from a decidedly conceptual standpoint. With a foreword by Mayen Beckmann, an introduction by Yilmaz Dziewior, a laudation by Daniel Birnbaum, and an afterword by Hanspeter Sauter.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jochen Lempert at the Museum Ludwig, Köln, 23 April–13 June, 2010.

Jochen Lempert photographs the animal world in the most diverse contexts: from their natural habitat to the museum of natural history, from the zoo to the urban environment, in remote places or banal settings and situations. Lempert compiles his findings in a vast archive of images covering an ample spectrum, from common everyday views, to compositions that tend towards abstraction. This interest in the natural world as a subject has been further complemented by his exploration of the properties and materiality of the photographic image. Analogue, black and white, hand-printed in the darkroom, his photographs resist categorization and confront the canons of today’s aesthetic.

Live Volume 1, concentrates on a major exhibition of new sculptural works at Museum Ludwig. A full-scale reproduction of fragments of the artist’s house in Los Angeles grafted onto the architecture of the Ludwig museum, the exhibition collapses two spaces together, producing a strange third space.

Live Volume 2, comprises a photographic monograph of selected works covering the artist’s unconventional production over the past five years. Combining documentation of significant individual works, exhibitions, and large-scale installations with the artist’s own production documentation of works in the studio, the book is a unique look at works in progress.