Program Preview
In 2024, the Museum of Contemporary Art Siegen (MGKSiegen) will be equipping itself for the future. The museum’s operation since its opening in 2001, as well as changing technical requirements necessitate some refurbishment. From February to June, the lighting and some of the building’s other utilities will be brought up to date. The museum will remain open to the public despite the ongoing measures and will only be temporarily closed in some areas. The MGKSiegen will therefore be completely closed from 3 June to 29 June.
On Sunday, 30 June of the anniversary year “Siegen 800”, artist Sung Tieu will be awarded the 9th Siegen Promotional Award of the Rubens Prize; a solo exhibition with many of the artist’s new works will open at the same time.
Sung Tieu
9th Siegen Promotional Award of the Rubens
30 June – 10 November 2024
Sung Tieu (born 1987) will be receiving the 9th Siegen Promotional Award of the Rubens Prize on 30 June 2024. The award is endowed with prize money of €5,000, and includes an exhibition at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen and a publication.Tieu creates minimalist environments and works using changing media such as installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, text and sounds, found objects and memorabilia. Her works are based on extensive research and are often created to interrelate with their immediate environment in the exhibition venue and in conjunction with her collaborators. They deal with questions of social responsibility and bureaucratic power structures in the context of social coexistence. In July 2023, a jury of experts chose the artist, who grew up in Berlin, as the latest winner and explained their decision as follows: “Sung Tieu is one of the most exciting voices of her generation. Born in Vietnam, at the age of five she followed her father – who had been working as a contract labourer in the GDR since the late 1980s – to the reunified Germany. In her works, she reflects on her own experience of migration, which unfolds along the complex fault lines of former East and West Germany and their respective allies. Her works are not solely biographical, however they are devoted to the ideological, economic and socio-political structures that define our social coexistence. Her work highlights the critical infrastructures that determine who or what achieves visibility.”
Curated by Thomas Thiel
Supported by the University City of Siegen, the Peter Paul Rubens Foundation and the Circle of Friends of MGKSiegen
Still to be seen:
Philipp Timischl
I like my brain and thinking and always having thoughts
MGKWalls
Philipp Timischl (*1989 in Graz, Austria, lives and works in Paris, France) has developed a new work for the fourth edition of “MGKWalls” entitled “I like my brain and thinking and always having thoughts”. Timischl’s multimedia installations combine painting, sculpture, video and text. His works are characterised by the interplay of found and self-made images, documentation and fiction, the personal and the public; they also involve consideration of the everyday, of the self, the body and gender, social milieus and the public sphere. The artist opens various narrative levels and interim spaces across a wide spectrum of different media. The new work for the MGKSiegen creates an interface between interior and exterior space, between media and spatial experience. It consists of a large-format wall drawing using airbrush technique and specially fabricated videos from waiting loops and popular online video material. A Buddha-like muscleman meets a cute Chihuahua puppy. Both walls create a moment of deceleration and waiting, but also an aspect of comic surprise. Timischl poses questions about experiencing art and the viewer’s associated expectations.
The site-specific exhibition series “MGKWalls” focuses on annual presentations placed on two prominent walls of the museum: the entrance wall in the foyer and the large LED wall on the external façade. Programmatically, this opens up the museum architecture to the city – and it has been a bold distinguishing feature of the building since its opening.
Curated by Thomas Thiel
Upcoming:
Shortcuts
The collections of MGKSiegen
23.8.24-16.3.25
Morandi Resonances
29.11.24-23.3.25
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