Ulrike Müller. Monument to My Paper Body
Wall painting 12/09/2023 – 12/09/2025
Opening: Friday, December 8th, 2023, at 7 p.m.
Matinée: Saturday, December 9th, 2023, at 11:30 a.m
With Carla Accardi, Laurie Anderson, Belkis Ayón, Lygia Clark, Nancy Graves, Alex Hay, Alfred Jensen, Bertram Jesdinsky, Jasper Johns, Imi Knoebel, Christopher Knowles, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Sol LeWitt, Lee Lozano, Rune Mields, Klaus Paier, Margit Palme, Judy Pfaff, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Miriam Schapiro, Peter Young and Fahr El-Nissa Zeid
The starting point for Ulrike Müller's exhibition Monument to My Paper Body was the invitation to the New York-based artist to create a site-specific intervention for the two opposite, nine meter wide and fourteen meter high walls in the light tower of the Ludwig Forum Aachen to design. Paper Body (ghost) and Paper Body (pointer) were created , both from 2023: temporary monumentalizations of two small-format collages, which were enlarged to match the scale of the architecture and transferred to the wall as abstract color areas, partly using the sponge technique. In interaction with a selection of collages and a group of enamel pendants, the Miniatures , 2014, a fabric sample developed for the exhibition and the museum's architectural model, a complex game of proportions and material translations begins, which continues in the adjacent rooms.
Monument to My Paper Body presents the range of painterly and spatial working methods with which Ulrike Müller has combined her studio practice and public presentation and mediation strategies over the past few years. Image formats and materials from the repertoire of art history meet those with reference to everyday life and craftsmanship and establish a concept of painting beyond brush and canvas. In addition to the murals, the artist's collages, monotypes, drawings, textile and enamel paintings are presented. In the graphics cabinets in the museum's basement, 198 vector drawings, diagrams of her original drawings made in colored pencil since 2010, form a continuous frieze, which is interrupted in 21 places by individual images executed in enamel on steel. The latter offer insights into the development of motif and color constellations, while the frieze inventories formations and repetitions.
As part of her artistic work, Ulrike Müller also repeatedly works on curatorial projects. The dissolution of supposedly fixed categorizations, roles or genre attributions, but also of art and collection histories in favor of ambivalences, instabilities and counter-projects as well as an interrogation of gaps and gaps form a focus of interest. For Monument to My Paper Body, Ulrike Müller, together with Eva Birkenstock, set up a collection presentation in three other exhibition rooms, which was created using her own work and in dialogue with it. Removed from art historical brackets, familiar and less frequently seen collection holdings are rearranged according to Müller's questions, methods and interests.
Monument to My Paper Body shifts the concept of the monumental. The logic of asserting meaning through magnification meets the fragility, temporality and openness of Ulrike Müller's collages made from scraps of paper. The body of the collection, the body of her works on paper, but also the visitors' bodies moving through the rooms are placed in a dynamic relationship in which proportions, value constellations and abilities to act appear as questions.
The exhibition takes up the Double Wall Projects series (2004–08) initiated by Harald Kunde, in which artists were invited on an annual basis to activate the museum's two monumental walls as artistic intervention surfaces. From December, the series will once again become an integral part of the exhibition program at the Ludwig Forum Aachen in an expanded form.
Curated by Eva Birkenstock
Curatorial assistance: Mailin Haberland
Graphic Design: HIT
With the generous support of the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Rhineland Regional Association, BMKOES, the State of Vorarlberg and Rueff Textil.
publication
Monument to My Paper Body is accompanied by a program of events and the production of a publication.
Events
Friday, December 8th, 2023, at 7 p.m.
Opening
Welcome: Heinrich Brötz, Head of Cultural Affairs, City of Aachen and Eva Birkenstock,
curator of the exhibition, director, Ludwig Forum Aachen Saturday, December 9th, 2023, at 11:30 a.m., Space
Grand Affairs Matinée with conversation between Ulrike Müller and Manuela Ammer
Thursday, April 11th, 2024, at 6 p.m.
Guided tour of the exhibition with Mailin Haberland (curatorial assistant)
Meeting point: 6 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum entry
Sunday, April 28, 2024, 12 p.m.
Artist lecture by Ulrike Müller
Thursday, June 6th, 2024, at 6 p.m.
Guided tour of the exhibition with Mailin Haberland (curatorial assistant)
Meeting point: 6 p.m. in the entrance area, costs: €2.00 plus museum entry
General information
Arrival & contact
Ludwig Forum
Jülicher Straße 97-109
52070 Aachen
Germany
