Museum Ludwig | Andy Warhol Now
Andy Warhol is undoubtedly the number one Pop Art artist. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is dedicating a major retrospective to him, featuring over a hundred works. In addition to art-historical icons such as the Elvis Presley series, color variations of an electric chair, serial portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Tomato Soup, and Brillo boxes, the exhibition also features films and other media works that perhaps most clearly reveal Warhol’s interest in a diverse, queer counterculture that was at home in his New York studio, the Factory. The exhibition demonstrates that Andy Warhol’s work remains highly relevant in our time, when an ever-growing number of people are calling for the recognition and promotion of cultural and gender diversity.
235 Media installed several large-scale monitor and projection works. These included “Screen Tests” with a projection surface of nearly 80 square meters, as well as “Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” a room installation featuring 14 projectors.
The “Screen Tests” (1964–66) are a series of black-and-white film portraits. They depict a wide variety of people—usually from the neck up against plain backgrounds—many of whom were part of New York’s cultural scene in the mid-1960s. Under Warhol’s direction, the subjects attempted to sit motionless for about three minutes while being filmed in slow motion. The films represented a new form of portraiture—a slow-moving, almost motionless image of a person. “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable” was a series of multimedia events organized by Andy Warhol in 1966–67. They included performances by The Velvet Underground & Nico, screenings of Warhol’s films, and performances by regulars at The Factory.
“Andy Warhol Now” is a collaboration between the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Tate Modern in London. Other venues include the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado.
For copyright reasons, we are only showing images taken during the installation process and for the purpose of documenting our own work.
