The Power Plant

This groundbreaking exhibition looks at the mythic and art historical significance of Cologne, Germany, bringing together three generations of highly influential European and American artists.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Cologne was one of the most important centers for contemporary art in Europe, if not the world. With its many galleries, artist-run spaces and artist bars, the city assumed an almost mythological dimension as a place where artists showed, sold, socialized, and distinguished themselves and their work on levels both symbolic and real. Highlighting the work of more than twenty-five artists from Cologne, Los Angeles, New York, London, and Berlin, Make Your Own Life explores one of the defining legacies of this time: the privileging of the artist's life and context as a basis for understanding artistic practice. How to make art in relation to a set of communities, histories, market conditions, and social attitudes was at the core of the Cologne scene. Fiercely debated, dramatized in exaggerated behavior, art works and exhibitions, the performance of an artistic persona contributed to Cologne’s aura as a city of extreme self-consciousness and audacity.