On 17 November 2023, Francis Alÿs (b. 1959 in Antwerp) will be awarded the 29th Wolfgang Hahn Prize of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst.
As is customary, the prize entails the acquisition of a work for the collection of the Museum Ludwig. Francis Alÿs’s untitled two-part work is part of the so-called Sign Painting Project (1993–1997). Over a period of four years, Alÿs created a series of paintings depicting the same figure of a man in a suit in the style of the enamel advertising signs (Spanish: rotulos) of the sign painters in Mexico City. The rotulistas were a defining part of urban life in Mexico at the time the series was created. The works reflect Alÿs’s discomfort with supposedly art-immanent values, such as the concept of originality and the value chains associated with this.
About the Wolfgang Hahn Prize
The Wolfgang Hahn Prize is awarded annually by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig, and is being presented in 2023 for the twenty-ninth time. The award is primarily intended to recognize contemporary artists who have already made a name for themselves in the art world through their internationally recognized oeuvre, but who are not as well known in Germany as they deserve to be. The prize money of a maximum of 100,000 euros comes from contributions by the members and is used to acquire a work or series of works by the artist for the collection of the Museum Ludwig. The prize includes an presentation organized by the Museum Ludwig with an acquired work by the prize winner as well as an accompanying publication.
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