Our Present
For many, the present seems incomprehensible and inexplicable. Although we are confronted daily with new diagnoses of the present – condensed into buzzwords such as digital change, post-factual age, migration society or climate crisis – we are losing ourexperience of the moment and of contemporaneity.
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Nordenhake Gallery, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Forensic Oceanography/Forensic Architecture, The Crime of Rescue – The Iuventa Case 2018, Courtesy the artists, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Pauline Boudry und Renate Lorenz, Silent, 2016, © Courtesy the artist, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Basim Magdy, New Acid, 2019, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Wong Ping, Wong Ping's Fables 2, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Geumhyung Jeong, Spa & Beauty, 2017, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Yesterday, today and tomorrow fall into one. The future is already happening in the present, which has not yet come to terms with the past. It seems that the present is either endless or disappearing altogether. Against this background, the exhibition “Our Present” shows how artists relate to the present, and the forms that they give to it. The works exhibited address topics such as physicality, identity, politics and technology.
By including different cultural contexts, in awareness of a common media sphere and its linkage of the past and the future, the exhibition opens up a multiple perspective to its viewers on differing ideas of the present today.
The issue of the present marks the beginning of our 2020 programme under the artistic direction of Thomas Thiel, while simultaneously including a fresh presentation of the collections in the sense of revisualizing the past.
Our Present, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Works by Maria Lassnig, Yvonne Rainer and Lucian Freud, © Maria Lassnig Foundation/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020, Yvonne Rainer and The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images, Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
With contributions by
Eric Baudelaire
Pauline Boudry/
Renate Lorenz
Forensic Oceanography/
Forensic Architecture
Geumhyung Jeong
Hanne Lippard
Basim Magdy
Frida Orupabo
Wong Ping
Clemens von Wedemeyer
as well as works from the
Lambrecht-Schadeberg Collection
and the museum’s Contemporary
Art Collection by
Charles Atlas
Francis Bacon
John Baldessari
Bernd und Hilla Becher
Vajiko Chachkhiani
Simone Forti
Terry Fox
Lucian Freud
Bernhard Fuchs
Rupprecht Geiger
Dan Graham
Katharina Grosse
Hans Haacke
Hans Hartung
Lena Henke
Candida Höfer
Nancy Holt
Joan Jonas
Isaac Julien
Aglaia Konrad
Maria Lassnig
Jochen Lempert
Sol LeWitt
Gordon Matta-Clark
Giorgio Morandi
Bruce Nauman
Nam June Paik
Otto Piene
Sigmar Polke
Charlotte Posenenske
Yvonne Rainer
Bridget Riley
Andrea Robbins/
Max Becher
Emil Schumacher
Antoni Tàpies
Diana Thater
Niele Toroni
Cy Twombly
Stephen Willats
Fritz Winter
Exhibition kindly
supported by
Education program
kindly supported by
Media partner
