In 2019, the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst am Mu­se­um Lud­wig will rec­og­nize Jac Leirn­er with the Wolf­gang Hahn Prize. The Brazilian artist, born in São Pau­lo in 1961, has been pur­su­ing a sub­tle anal­y­sis of so­cial and rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al sys­tems for many years. Found, of­ten in­dus­trial­ly man­u­fac­tured ev­ery­day ob­jects from which she cre­ates in­s­tal­la­tions, col­lages, and sculp­tures ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of col­lect­ing, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, and clas­si­fy­ing play an im­por­tant role in her work. This re­sults in dense, of­ten min­i­mal­ist works that play with the aes­thet­ic, rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al, and so­cio-cul­tu­r­al lev­els of mean­ing of the ob­jects.

The year 2019 is a spe­cial mile­s­tone for the Wolf­gang Hahn Prize. For the first time, the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst is hon­or­ing a South Amer­i­can artist for her in­ter­na­tio­n­al­ly rel­e­vant oeu­vre. This will broa­d­en the per­spec­tive of the award to­ward de­vel­op­ments in glob­al con­tem­po­rary art. Leirn­er’s work, lo­cat­ed at the in­ter­sec­tion of min­i­mal­ism, con­cep­tu­al­ism, and In­sti­tu­tio­n­al Cri­tique, is an im­por­tant ad­di­tion to the col­lec­tion of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig. Thanks to the ded­i­ca­tion of its mem­bers, the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst is pre­sent­ing the Wolf­gang Hahn Prize for the twen­ty-fifth year in a row.

Jac Leirn­er’s work Mu­se­um Bags (1985/2018) will be ac­quired by the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst for the col­lec­tion of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig on the oc­ca­sion of the award cer­e­mony and pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. The award al­so in­cludes a publi­ca­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the artist, edit­ed by the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst.