Amy Sillman. Oh, Clock! – Sammlungspräsentation

In the organizer's words:

Oh, Clock!, the first major solo exhibition by New York painter Amy Sillman (*1955 in Detroit) in German-speaking countries, consists of two parts: The first part of the exhibition, which was on display at the Ludwig Forum until August 31, 2025, showed a concentrated selection of Sillman's works from the last ten years, including 24 paintings, over 300 drawings, prints and collages, several large installations and digital animations. It illuminated the artist's longstanding critical engagement with the history of painting on and beyond the canvas and provided comprehensive insights into her versatile and hybrid systems. The second part, which will be on display until May 24, 2026, is a curatorial collection intervention by the artist: on diagonal walls painted by her, she presents several dozen works selected by her from the Peter and Irene Ludwig Collection in Aachen.

Amy Sillman's artistic practice extends far beyond painting and has for years included writing, animated films and, more recently, various curatorial projects with museum collections. In 2019, for example, she selected 80 works from the museum collection for The Shape of Shape at MoMA New York, in which considerations of form dominate. At the time, she explained: "Although shapes are everywhere, we don't talk about them much. They are not a hotly debated topic in art, like color or systems". On the occasion of the exhibition cooperation between the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Ludwig Forum Aachen, Amy Sillman is now once again devoting herself to the collections of both institutions as part of Oh, Clock! Following her presentation of the collection at the Kunstmuseum Bern (until November 2, 2025), which was installed against the active backdrop of her wall paintings, in Aachen Sillman intensively explored works from the Ludwig Collection. She uses concepts such as figure, color, pattern and emptiness - terms that are crucial to her own painting practice - as a filter for her selection. Around 80 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures are presented on the walls of three exhibition rooms as well as on five newly produced, double-sided movable walls on rolls. On the latter, Sillman has created improvised murals that were created on site. The artist thus interweaves different schools, continents, media and artistic styles and creates a comprehensive language of form, color, time and meaning by creating a new interweaving of foreground and background, harmonies and tensions. The works are not arranged chronologically or thematically, but are guided by questions of form, color, size and site-specific relationships between art objects, architecture and the museum itself. The Kunstmuseum Bern and the Ludwig Forum opened up their respective collections to a new perspective, using the artist's own methodology to create formal and political connections. Sillman's particular interest in non-mainstream positions and artists with less commercial careers will shed new light on what has previously been overlooked by additionally 'puncturing' the canonical structures inherent in the collections.

With works by Carla Accardi, John Ahearn, Laurie Anderson, Belkis Ayón, Donald Baechler, Nairy Baghramian, Georg Baselitz, Tim Berresheim, Bernhard Johannes Blume, Mel Bochner, Peter Brüning, Lygia Clark, Alan Cote, Ivan Čujkov, Rolf-Gunter Dienst, Felix Droese, Marianne Eigenheer, Siron Franco, Gotthard Graubner, Ellen Gronemeyer, Richard Hamilton, Jann Haworth, Alex Hay, Gottfried Helnwein, Peter Herrmann, Jörg Immendorff, Bertram Jesdinsky, Jasper Johns, Maksim Kantor, Konrad Klapheck, Oleg Kudrjaschov, Gabriel Kuri, Fehér László, Roy Lichtenstein, Ivan Lubennikov, Brigitta Malche, Anatolij Mašarov, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Lázaro García Medina, István Nádler, Galina Neledva, Kenneth Noland, Igor Obrosov, Albert Oehlen, Nikola Ovčinnikov, A.R. Penck, Raymond Pettibon, Uwe Pfeifer, Peter Piller, Viktor Pivovarov, Adelaida Pologova, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Rissa, Otto Sander-Tischbein, Augustinas Savickas, Inga Savranskaja, Hans Scheib, Aleksandr Sitnikov, Emil Sorge, Eduard Steinberg, Radiš Tordija, Don Van Vliet, Sergej Volkov, Andy Warhol, Walerian Wassiljev, William Wegman, Hermann Weisweiler and Dmitrij Žilinskij.

Amy Sillman. Oh, Clock! was curated by Eva Birkenstock with curatorial assistance from Mailin Haberland and Anna Marckwald and is a cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Bern.

Supported by the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation, Victor Rolff Foundation, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland and the Jugend- und Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse Aachen.

Price information:

Museum admission: Regular €10.00 Reduced €6.00