Welcome: Jeanine Meerapfel, President Akademie der Künste
Welcoming address: Rolf Tegtmeier, Director executive staff, Kreissparkasse Köln
Jury-Statement: Hubertus von Amelunxen, Member of the Visual Arts Section
Laudatory speech: Klaus Biesenbach, Director Neue Nationalgalerie
The artist is present

Exhibition Nan Goldin open until 24h

Nan Goldin is receiving the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2022. On the occasion of the award ceremony, the Akademie der Künste will be showing photographs by Nan Goldin from five decades. The US artist occupies a central position in contemporary photography; her focus is on the themes of love, sexuality, and violence. With works of her personal life and the LGBTQ+ community, she has broken taboos, transcended boundaries, thus advocating for acceptance and the growing recognition of the LGBTQ+ scene. The immediacy of her photographs stems from her physical and emotional allegiance and proximity to a milieu that has been closed to many people and opened up by her as an artist.

Goldin works and conceives her images in rhythmic sequences. This gives rise to a cumulative aspect of her compositions, which are in constant motion through extensions, changes, and the changing relationships of the individual elements to one another.

The exhibition features black-and-white and colour photographs from the early Boston years, New York, Berlin, and Asia, as well as recent large-scale works such as landscapes and grids.