Francis Alÿs

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.

 

For more Information see here

November 17, 2023