Ludwig Seyfarth

Unsichtbare Sammlungen
Kunst nach der Postmoderne
VOLUME 170

A Humorous Observer Charts the Agency of Art

Ludwig Seyfarth’s essays stake out a distinctive place between academic art scholarship and art criticism. They analyze selected positions and thematic concerns in an undogmatic effort to sketch the place of contemporary art in today’s world. An “heir” to postmodernism, the writer scrutinizes the central significance of collecting, which has not only been manifest for some time in the ever more dominant role collectors play in the art world: it has emerged as a structural element of artistic approaches, especially in the reflection on identities in a society shaped by media.

Unsichtbare Sammlungen turns the spotlight on the diversity of forms of creative engagement—from deliberate transgression to the architect’s vocation, from revivals of the art of the eighteenth century to the history of landscape painting.

Ludwig Seyfarth (b. Hamburg, 1960) is a freelance writer and curator. He has been writing for magazines and newspapers on a regular basis since 1987. In 2007, Seyfarth was honored with the ADKV-ART-COLOGNE Award for art criticism. As a curator, he has worked for the Kunsthaus, Hamburg; Villa Merkel, Esslingen; the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; KINDL—Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin; KAI 10 | Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf; and other institutions.