ART COLOGNE

David Hockney. 1937 – 2026.

He painted joy as a serious act. California light, swimming pools, Yorkshire seasons, iPad drawings at 87 — always looking, always finding a new way to say what seeing felt like. Always in the now. A career of nearly seven decades that never once ran out of curiosity.

Sunbather is in the collection of Museum Ludwig Köln, here in Cologne. We think of him looking at it today.

He said it himself: "I have the vanity of an artist — I want my work to be seen. But I don't necessarily have to be seen."

It will be seen. In Cologne.

20 years. Still the only award of its kind in Germany.

Since 2006, ART COLOGNE and the ADKV Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine - the working group of German art associations - have jointly presented two awards that quietly do some of the most important work in the German cultural landscape: the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Award for Art Associations and the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Award for Art Criticism.

Off the beaten track. Fostering social relevance. For the kunstverein in a small town that takes a risk on an unknown artist. For the freelance critic who writes with independence and rigour when the press landscape makes that harder every year.

More than 308 art associations across Germany. A tradition of art criticism stretching back to 1999. Two decades of making this work visible and saying: it matters.

"Particularly at a time when attention shifts ever more rapidly, art needs places and voices that allow for the new and initiate debates. Art associations and art criticism assume precisely these roles. That we as ART COLOGNE have been able to reward this commitment together with the ADKV for 20 years makes me very proud", says Daniel Hug, Director and artistic director of ART COLOGNE.

Here's to 20 more.

ART COLOGNE: 5-8 November 2026 | Koelnmesse - Köln Messe/Deutz

Image:
ADKV-ART COLOGNE Awards Ceremony 2025: Prizes for Art Associations and Art Criticism. From left to right: Daniel Hug (ART COLOGNE), Adina Riekmann (Kunstverein Dresden), Noemie Y. Molitor (Art Critic), Ursula Schöndeling (ADKV). Photo: Koelnmesse GmbH.

This summer in Hamburg. ❤️

Melike Kara (*1985, Bergisch Gladbach, lives and works in Cologne) takes over Kunsthaus Hamburg with Whispers — a solo exhibition that marks a genuine turning point in her practice.

Kara's work begins where so many important things begin: in what is at risk of disappearing. Her Kurdish-Alevi roots, the everyday moments and landscapes of a culture under pressure, the ornamental language of Kurdish tapestries translated into painting and spatial installation. For years she has collected, archived and transformed these fragments into art that makes the beauty of Kurdish traditions visible — beyond pain and persecution.

Whispers asks something harder. For this exhibition Kara burns photographs from her own archive and transfers them into the space as ash. What remains are traces — fragments of images that resist being fixed. A frieze of coffee grounds runs through the room like a sediment of the past. Plants grow. Coffee seeps from the walls and collects in basins. Identity as something that never stops changing.

An expansive installation developed specifically for Kunsthaus Hamburg, part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026. A body of work that already belongs to the collection of Museum Ludwig, acquired at ART COLOGNE 2024. An artist at the height of her powers, represented by Galerie Jan Kaps, Cologne.

📌 Melike Kara — Whispers
📅 5 June – 23 August 2026
📍 Kunsthaus Hamburg

See you in Cologne this November.
ART COLOGNE: 5-8 November 2026 | Koelnmesse - Köln Messe/Deutz

Image:
Studio shot, 2025, © Melike Kara, Photo: Şirin Şimşek

Sophie von Hellermann: Letters to a Young Painter. Wentrup Galerie, Berlin. Through 13 June.

2026 is Rilke's year — 150th birthday, 100th anniversary of his death, both falling at once. Von Hellermann has taken that coincidence seriously. Her new paintings grow from a long engagement with his life and work, and the connection makes sense: both painter and poet work with suggestion rather than statement, mood rather than narrative, figures that remain deliberately unfinished.

Von Hellermann paints without sketches or preliminary drawings, which means every canvas carries the energy of a first and final decision simultaneously. Mythology, literature, film, memory — woven together and then immediately committed to paint. The result is dreamlike without being vague, and figurative without being fixed.
A painter at full stretch, on the right subject, in the right year.

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ART COLOGNE: 5-8 November 2026 | Koelnmesse - Köln Messe/Deutz