Museum Ludwig presents the exhibition On the Value of Time from 10. August 2023 to 31. August 2025. Every two years, the Museum Ludwig shows works of contemporary art in a new presentation. This time, the installations Mountains of Encounter, 2008, by Haegue Yang (1971 in Seoul, South Korea) and The Documentary: Geocentric Puncture, 2014 by Guan Xiao (1983 in Chongqing, China) draw attention to different understandings of time.
Image above: Mark Dion GFLK Surveys Bureau, [Erhebungsbüro der GFLK], 2011 Installation; Holz, Tapete, sieben Uhren und andere Materialien, 290 x 390 x 120 cm Courtesy Mark Dion und Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin /Köln/München Reproduktion: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln
Guan contrasts the belief in progress with the perception of time on the internet, in which present and past coincide. She printed large sheets of vinyl with snake patterns, which hang down from metal holders and also serve as a base for selected objects from different contexts. These are the latest optical devices, everyday objects and sculptures that cite the ancient symbol of the self-consuming snake (Ouroboros) and the stone head from Easter Island. Two surveillance cameras filming each other form the contemporary counterpart to the snake, in which the future and the past coincide in the present. The title “Geocentric Wound” is also to be understood in this sense. An outdated view of the world, according to which the sun orbits the earth, lives on in the 21st century in the idea that man forms the centre of the world.
In Mountains of Encounter from 2008, Haegue Yang takes a hidden historical event that was part of global processes as the occasion for an expansive installation that involves the visitors. The Korean independence fighter Kim San (1905-1937) met with the US journalist Nym Wales (aka Helen Foster Snow 1907-1997) in the Chinese mountain region of Yan’an around 1935. Wales published their conversations in 1941 under the title “Songs of Arirang: The Story of a Korean Rebel Revolutionary in China” – a little-received book that has only recently been reissued.
WHEN?
Exhibition period:
Thursday, 10. August 2023 until Sunday, 31. August 2025
Opening hours:
Tuesday until Sunday, Public holidays 10 am to 6 pm
Every first Thursday of the month 10 am to 10 pm
WHERE?
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Köln
COSTS?
Regular: 12 €
Reduced: 8 €
Free admission for children and young people up to the age of 18
Groupe: 8,70 € per person
