Client: Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Andy Warhol Now
December 12th 2020 – June 13th 2021
Andy Warhol is without a doubt the number one Pop artist. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is dedicating a major retrospective to him with over one hundred works. Alongside art-historical icons such as the Elvis Presley, Electric Chair and Marilyn Monroe Series or Campbell’s Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes, the exhibition also presents films and other media works that perhaps most clearly reveal Warhol’s interest in a diverse, queer counterculture that was based in his New York studio, the Factory. The exhibition is evidence that Andy Warhol’s work remains highly relevant in our time, when an ever-increasing number of people are calling for the recognition and promotion of cultural and gender diversity.
235 Media installed several room-sized monitor and projection works. These included “Screen Tests,” with a projection area of nearly 80 square meters, and “Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” a spatial installation with 14 monitors.
“Screen Tests” (1964–66) are a series of black-and-white film portraits. They show a variety of people – usually from the neck up against plain backgrounds – many of whom were part of the mid-1960s New York cultural scene. Under Warhol’s direction, the sitters attempted to sit motionless for about three minutes while being filmed in slow motion. The films represented a new kind of portraiture – a slow-moving, almost still 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 Factory regulars.
Andy Warhol Now is a cooperation of Cologne’s Museum Ludwig and London’s Tate Modern. Other venues include the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado.
For copyright reasons, we only show images taken during the installation process and to document our own work.