Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound - Announcements - e-flux (2025)

From April 13 to October 5, 2025, the Langen Foundation in Neuss will present an extensive selection of works from the Swiss Ringier Collection, marking its first major exhibition in Germany. Curated by Beatrix Ruf and artist Wade Guyton, the exhibition features approximately 500 works from over 100 artists (see full list here), offering an overview of one of the most relevant collections of contemporary art. Spanning works from the late 1960s to the present day, it documents Michael Ringier’s 30 years as a collector and key developments in the art world.

TitledDrawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound, the exhibition showcases works across nearly all forms of artistic media. Together, these pieces form a rich and layered portrait of Michael Ringier, a Swiss publisher and media entrepreneur, whose collection of art is deeply intertwined with his personal and professional life, as well as the identity of Ringier, a media company active in 19 countries across Europe and Africa.

Ringier’s integration of art into its corporate culture is a defining characteristic of the company. Since 1997, ithas invited international artists to design its annual reports, granting them complete creative freedom. These collaborations have resulted in creative and intelligent explorations of the role of a media publisher today and its engagement with audiences. Renowned artists including Fischli/Weiss, Maurizio Cattelan, and Sylvie Fleury have contributed to these reports, as has Wade Guyton, whose report featured a one-to-one reproduction of one of his paintings printed in high-resolution detail across hundreds of pages. When compiled, these pages recreate the work in its original dimensions.

The exhibition’s subversive title highlights how traditional artistic media continues to inspire new interpretations—both by challenging their conventional boundaries and through intentional artistic ambiguity.Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Soundreexamines the expectations surrounding what defines a medium and how it shapes our perception. The connection to a global media company like Ringier is evident: from its beginnings in publishing and printing to its evolution into a digitized and diversified corporation, the company has been shaping the relationship between content and medium for over 190 years. Wade Guyton, too, challenges the concept of the medium of painting—whether through his large-format printed works or the strategic use of digital technologies, he questions what a medium can be and how it shapes the art it conveys.

About the Ringier Collection
Ringier is a digitalized and diversified Swiss media company active in Europe and Africa. The Ringier Collection was initiated by Swiss publisher Michael Ringier and curated by Beatrix Ruf from 1995 to 2014, followed by Arthur Fink until 2022. It spans a wide range of contemporary art, including photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, with works dating back to the late 1960s. The collection focuses on acquiring extensive groups of works by its represented artists and showcasing them in rotating exhibitions within the company’s spaces. Many of its works and groups are featured in national and international exhibitions, ensuring broad and ongoing visibility for diverse audiences.

About theLangenFoundation
TheLangenFoundation in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia, was founded by MarianneLangenand is dedicated to theLangenCollection, an important collection of Eastern and Western art assembled by Viktor and MarianneLangen. The building, designed by Tadao Ando, is situated on a former NATO missile base. Ando aimed to create a continuity between the interior and exterior of the building, using reinforced concrete, glass, and steel in a double-shell construction that blends into the surrounding landscape. With an exhibition space of 1,300 square meters, the foundation not only shows its collection, but also hosts exhibitions by renowned contemporary artists, including Ólafur Elíasson, Richard Deacon, Minjung Kim, Park Seo-Bo, Alicja Kwade, Sean Scully and Julian Charrière.

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