7 August 2018

Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis 2018. Adrian Piper
Exhibition 1 September to 14 October 2018

Invitation to the Press Preview: Friday, 31 August 2018, 11 am

Exhibition halls open from 10:30 am
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Please register for the press briefing at: Tel. +49 (0)30 200 57-1514 or presse@adk.de

With
Marcel Odenbach, artist, member of the jury and of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste
Helmut Draxler, art historian, cultural theorist and curator
Wulf Herzogenrath, art historian, Director of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste,
and Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Akademie der Künste

On the occasion of the awarding of the Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis 2018 to Adrian Piper, the Akademie der Künste is showing three site-specific installations realised at the Akademie building at Pariser Platz for the first time in Europe.
Mauer (2010), Hier (2018) and Das Ding-an-sich bin ich (2018) pick up on personal experience that is closely linked to Piper's flight to Berlin in 2005 and arriving in a new country, translating these into works of art using various media. Her autobiographical book Escape to Berlin: A Travel Memoir has recently been published in English and in German.
With the award, the Akademie is honouring an internationally active artist and analytical philosopher, who has had a significant influence on American conceptual art since the mid-1960s. Addressing themes such as gender and race, Piper expanded the spectrum of conceptual art and first-generation minimalism. The jurors and Akademie members Marcel Odenbach, Wolfgang Petrick and Wolfgang Tillmans emphasise that Adrian Piper's "empathetic ways of thinking and acting ensure that her research and projects bring the social, economic, psychological, and spiritual potential of visual art powerfully and uniquely to the fore. Her influence on artists and an international audience remains incalculable, though not without consequence for our everyday lives and actions. Adrian Piper has had a lasting influence on how the Afro-American art scene is perceived and has held a mirror up to the white male perspective on culture in general."

At the opening of the exhibition, Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Akademie der Künste, Rolf Tegtmeier, Director of Kreissparkasse Cologne, and jury member Marcel Odenbach will be speaking. Art historian, cultural theorist and curator Helmut Draxler will give the introduction.

Adrian Piper (*1948 in New York) has lived and worked in Berlin since 2005, where she runs the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin. Her artistic works, including works on paper, videos, multimedia installations, paintings, audio works, photographic and text-based graphics, have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Generali Foundation in Vienna. She has been awarded fellowships from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Adrian Piper received the Skowheagan Medal for Sculptural Installation and the New York Dance & Performance Award. In 2015, she was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1–3.

In her academic career as a philosopher, Adrian Piper gained a doctorate from Harvard University in the early 1980s with a thesis on rationality supervised by John Rawls. Her studies of Immanuel Kant took her to Germany, to Heidelberg University. Piper taught at several US universities and her many philosophy papers have focussed on meta-ethics, Kant and the history of ethics.

The Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis, which the Akademie der Künste awards to a visual artist on an annual basis, has a value of EUR 12,000. Previous winners include Katharina Sievering (2017), Edmund Kuppel (2016), Bernard Frize (2015), Corinne Wasmuht (2014), Eran Schaerf (2013) and Douglas Gordon (2012). The prize and the accompanying exhibition and publication are co-financed by Kreissparkasse Cologne, sponsor of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne.

A publication will accompany the exhibition. With the kind support of Kreissparkasse Cologne, sponsor of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne. Part of Berlin Art Week.

Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis 2018. Adrian Piper
Exhibition opening: 31 August 2018, 7 pm, free admission
Exhibition: 1 September 2018 – 14 October 2018, Tue – Sun 11 am – 7 pm
Admission EUR 6/4, free admission for visitors up to 18 years and on Tuesdays from 3 pm to 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Tel.: + 49 (0)30 20057-1000, info@adk.de

Press photos online at https://www.adk.de/de/presse/pressematerial.htm