An Invitation to Indulge, solo exhibition at BWA Warszawa

 

Philipp Gufler

AN INVITATION TO INDULGE

Opening, Friday, November 29 from 5 to 9 p.m. 

On view till January, 25, 2025. 

Philipp Gufler (born in Germany in 1989) delves into the history of Germany, The Netherlands and beyond, using his research to create works composed of pigment-spattered mirrors. Rectangular, triangular, square, these forms are reminiscent of the recognizable modernist shapes in the paintings of Frank Stella. Repetitive, geometric divisions into fields of color emanate a sense of calm and dignity. At times, it’s just color, or rather the material the pigment was drawn from, that is queerying our thought process, twisting the realm of pure abstraction into a narrative inspired by real-life events.

Is it not a carnation, whose pink essence covers the surface of such a mirror, a Wildesque symbol of cruising around the city in search of a partner? Can we talk about the suffering of the LGBTQ+ community without including pink triangles, which were the shapes the Nazis made gay people sew into their clothing at concentration camps during the Third Reich? These motifs set Gufler’s mirrored works into the queer context in a fascinating way, opening doors to the increasingly crowded room marked “Queer Art.” In Poland, it’s a novel moment. In this context, it’s worth mentioning the conceptual project by Karol Radziszewski Invisible (History of Belarussian Queerness) which comprises a series of purposely overexposed images, arranged as black squares on a white background. These images portray events from the lives of gay Belarussians in Communist Minsk. There’s also his “Flag” series, which references the Olympic symbol. Gufler goes one step further, launching a game onto the field of modernist art, whereby the mirror image is a symbol of relativity. This convention has been expertly applied in the past by the likes of Andy Warhol and Michelangelo Pistoletto in the west, and Edward Krasiński in Poland.

Gufler’s mirrored reflections are suffused with pigment, so they no longer depict their subject in a direct way. Instead, the vibrant mix of colors, cut up with slashes of more color, mar their reflections, just like gossip and lies mar the facts of life. The world in these mirrors is radically different from the one we know.

An Invitation to Indulge stands as an appendix of sorts to Gossipmongers (a group show bringing together Philipp Gufler, Karol Radziszewski and Jaanus Samma). A piece of gossip may often be the only bit of information we are afforded about an event, which doesn’t quite fit into the main narrative, primarily because it refers to an excluded group: for instance, women, immigrants, queer people. The archaeology of collective LGBTQ+ memory is based on detailed accounts tucked away in private archives. These documents are often coded, to disguise them from the prying eyes of society, who have the power to ostracize and censure, blurring out everything that is outside of the bounds of the heterosexual norm. And yet, don’t the histories written by heterosexual men through the ages also bend the truth, twist the facts to create a binary, black-and-white image of the world, with no room for shades of gray? Perhaps the queer-infused vision of the world conjured by Philipp Gufler isn’t so unrealistic as some might think. Perhaps a closer look would in fact bring us closer to the truth?

Photo: Julika Rudelius and Bartosz Zalewski

BWA WARSZAWA
ul. Marszałkowska 34/50/666
00-554 Warsaw

Tuesday - Friday
12 - 7 p.m.
Saturday noon - 4 p.m.

A Shrine To Aphrodite

A Shrine To Aphrodite

Philipp Gufler, 2023

The human body is a central focus in Philipp Gufler's mirror painting series. Looking at the work, the spectator is confronted with their own image. To make these works Gufler uses a silkscreen printing technique on mirrored glass in order to produce layers of translucent pigment.

"Gufler’s ‚mirrorical’ art passes through the looking glass; his spaces are traps for the gaze. The reflective surfaces and diaphanous scrims in his oeuvre function as projection screens and as obstacles in games of identification and disidentification; recognition and misrecognition; self-performance and self-alienation.“
Sven Lütticken

Concept/Editor: Philipp Gufler
Design: Sabo Day
Text contributions: Philipp Gufler, Sven Lütticken
Photos: Julika Rudelius
Silk screen print: Philipp Gufler at Grafisch Atelier Hilversum

78 p., 1c offset, softcover with linen spine and 16 silkscreen printed mirror papers, glued, 22.6 x 29.7 cm
ISBN: 978-3-947250-51-62023
numbered and signed Edition of 150
100 €

Queering the Narrative

Opening: July 02, 2022, 6 p.m. - 2 p.m.

Duration: July 03 - August 21, 2022

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present the group exhibition Queering the Narrative. The exhibition brings together for the first time at the Kunstverein 19 national and international artists, all of whom consider themselves to belong to the LGBTQIA* spectrum. 

Against the backdrop of prevailing heteronormative and reactionary manifestations of identity and their artistic representation, the group exhibition raises the question of queer identity and narratives and their influence on the artistic work of the participants.

With Queering the Narrative, the Kunstverein deliberately and exclusively offers space for diverse, queer positions in contemporary art. The public representation of queer issues in all media, including art, continues to draw social criticism today. This varies in intensity, based on the social and political systems as well as the geographically conditioned history in which queer concepts are negotiated, but never seems to be completely silenced, although the acceptance of queer content in the shelter of a museum or exhibition institution is growing. There, art not only succeeds in questioning  heteronormative values and codes, but also shows other points of view and perspectives, while creating identification potential for queer people. With the intention of increasingly inscribing queer images in the collective pictorial memory, ideally the fight for LGBTQIA* rights is also strengthened and a normalization of queer lifestyles is pushed forward.

The selected works in the exhibition at the NAK come from various genres, so painting meets graphics, photography, installation, sculpture or video. The works sometimes reveal interdisciplinary interfaces, but are also interconnected in terms of content and aesthetics in the exhibition context, thus forming a complex web of codes and narratives. The subjects of the works are particularly diverse, both private and political in nature, partly representational, partly abstract, but always committed to the question of queer identity, to the writing of (one's own) queer history.

Following the idea of Queering the Narrative, the Kunstverein would like to push the institutional discourse on queer contents and positions in the field of exhibitions and question the politics of power and visibility, especially in the art world. Queer identity and queer art are to be understood as a pluralistic, changeable concept, which in its manifold and positively occupied manifestations is placed complementarily alongside a heteronormative society.

Queerness as a gift, you're welcome. Going beyond the artistic productions of the exhibition, performances, lectures and workshops will evoke alternative, as queer, spaces of action in order to foreground performative and transgressive conceptions of LGBTQIA* identity. The corresponding program accompanying the exhibition can be found promptly on the NAK homepage and will be announced on social media.

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
Passstraße 29
52070 Aachen

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein / Fotos: Simon Vogel 

Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?

10 Sep – 19 Dec 2021 
Opening: 9 Sept, 8 pm

Mehraneh Atashi
Rossella Biscotti
Milena Bonilla
CPR
Anne Geene
Gluklya
Philipp Gufler
Camille Henrot
Patricia Kaersenhout
Otobong Nkanga
Ruchama Noorda
Maria Pask
Lily van der Stokker

The artists in this exhibition answer the question of the exhibition title with a resounding “YES!”. They show that the flower as a symbol can seduce, comfort, heal, adorn and distract, and find common ground in feminist affinities, queer desires and ecological solidarity. But flowers can also represent a form of oppression and censorship, a secret language, a wink and a punch all in one.

NEST

De Constant Rebecqueplein 20b
2518 RA Den Haag
The Netherlands

Fotos: Charlotte Markus 

Art works for the entrance of the Openbaar Ministerie

 

Haarlem, NL

Fotos: Franziska Müller Schmidt

King Louis II

29. January - 16. March 2019

Thursday, 28.02.2019, 8–10 pm

Film Screening

„Ritual of Farewell“, 2011

„Projektion auf die Krise (Gauweilereien in München)", 2014

„Becoming-Rabe“, 2016

by Philipp Gufler

Dramatis Personae
Ludwig II: the last Bavarian King; heavily in debt
Prince Paul: Ludwig’s aide-de-camp, and lover
Rabe Perplexum: an artist; wearing feathers
Peter Gauweiler: an angry, fearful man
Ben d'Armagnac: an artist; standing inside a large glass box
David: a statue, who has no lines; is only fallen in love with
Louis: a cat

Setting
A neighborhood bar, a quiet place you eventually forget the name of, as your first visit recedes in your memory, indistinguishable from the hundreds of times you've returned, drank, and drank to forget more than just the name of the bar. Lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors in ornate gilt frames, the tight space doesn't let you stray far from your own image. As you walk behind the row of bar stools with their patrons, there you are in the glass, looking over your own shoulder. Sometimes there are film screenings in the basement, the only time that the familiar scene is interrupted, when the regulars are again reminded of the name of the place: "Is this Reflections?" the newcomers ask as they enter the doorway, their skeptical expressions doubled in the mirror. Before anyone answers (and no one ever does) you've already entered, as if you've always known that this was the place. There's no sign on the front, but you can always find Reflections if you really need to.

The stage is empty except for Ludwig the King. He lingers over a glass, perhaps designing another extravagant castle in his imagination, or working out the details of his still unfinished Herrenchiemsee Palace. After bankrupting the royal purse and the monarchy tout court, he was declared insane and deposed by his ministers. Now an emigré living in a little German enclave in Chicago, he goes by Louis, but most of the regulars at the bar call him Lou. No wonder he recognizes himself more in the face of the cat, with whom he shares the feeling of being somehow irreconcilably different from his fellow drinkers, than in the reflection in the mirror.

Across the surface of these mirrors gauzy images transpire. Something familiar is queerly figured, a spectral face blending with our own. A bit like magic, we see other lives which rendered ours visible, and through our life something of theirs appears. In this little bar we see a distant transfer of Louis XIV’s Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, or Ludwig II's copy of it at Herrenchiemsee. The light of the sun reflected off the moon shimmering at the bottom of a glass; a Louis, a Ludwig, a Lou. Don’t think of it as a decline, but a transference of desires no less urgent or refined. Perhaps this bar is just as much a fantasy as the castle of Linderhof. Reflections is a real place, but you've never been there; I used to go there, but now I can't remember.

Becket Flannery, 2019


QBBQ's
Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 15
10178 Berlin
Tue - Sat 12 - 18 h

Fotos: Roman März 

Flam Encounter

Flam Encounter

12 – 30 September 2018

Opening FLAM Encounter

Wednesday 12 September, 8 pm


with Philipp Gufler
Richard John Jones
Maria Metsalu
Jacopo Miliani & Sara Giannini
Hannah Perry
Sarah van Lamsweerde

at Arti et Amicitiae
Rokin 112
1012 KZ Amsterdam

Fotos: FLAM Encounter, Chun-Han 

Setze dein Ich in Anführungsstriche, Kunstverein Göttingen

Philipp
Gufler

19.06. – 31.07. 2016

Setz dein Ich in Anführungsstriche

Mit »Setz dein Ich in Anführungsstriche« präsentiert der Kunstverein Göttingen Philipp Guflers erste institutionelle Einzelausstellung. Der Titel bezieht sich auf Hubert Fichtes »Versuch über die Pubertät« (1974), der mit den Worten »Setz doch dein Ich in Anführungsstriche – nenn dich ›Roman‹« seiner literarischen Annäherung auch eine analytische Distanz zur Seite stellte, um die eigene (zum Teil autobiografische) Herangehensweise infrage zu stellen. Mit einer ähnlichen Geste nähert sich Philipp Gufler den Inhalten der Ausstellung an: Guflers Arbeiten beschäftigen sich unter anderem mit zwei künstlerischen Positionen der 70er und 80er Jahre – Rabe Perplexum in München und Ben d’Armagnac in den Niederlanden – deren Performances und künstlerisches Werk heute nur in Bruchstücken rezipiert werden können. Es ist ein persönlicher Zugang, der trotz großer Nähe eine künstlerische Distanz wahrt; eine Überlagerung, ohne dass sich die eigene Künstleridentität in den Sujets auflöst.

Die Annäherung an die beiden Positionen erfolgt bei Gufler nicht nach kunsthistorischen Regeln oder durch Reenactments, stattdessen versucht er eine Art künstlerische Dopplung zu schaffen. Es geht ihm nicht um das (Wieder-)Auf- führen der Performances, sondern darum, mit den Mitteln der eigenen künstlerischen Praxis die Persona hinter der Performance auszuloten. »Becoming-Rabe« heißt eine Videoinstallation, in der Gufler die Rolle der Künstlerin Rabe Perplexum übernimmt. Die resultierende Verschmelzung der Identitäten passiert nicht linear, sondern durch eine poetische Mimesis, die durch Archivaufnahmen und Rabes Performance-Requisiten aufgebaut wird.

Das Motiv der Dopplung oder Überlagerung zieht sich wie ein roter Faden durch den Ausstellungsraum. Durch das Zusammenbringen verschiedener Ebenen, sowohl visueller als auch zeitlicher und identitärer, bricht Gufler mit einem üblichen (wissenschaftlichen) Geschichtsverständnis. Indem er die beiden Künstleridentitäten nicht als abgeschlossene, historische Entitäten betrachtet, kann er diese fortschreiben, um- ändern oder neu anordnen. Philipp Gufler produziert keine identitäre Festschreibung, sondern verwischt die Grenzen zwischen dem künstlerischen Selbst und dem Sujet – eine Geste, die in einer Serie von Quilts wieder aufgegriffen wird und die sich für die BetrachterInnen auch in einer Reihe an Siebdrucken auf Spiegeln entwickelt.

»Schwule Sprache ist uneigentlich, ist indirekte Sprache«, schrieb Fichte über Henry James, sie arbeite mit »Soussentendus, Verfremdungen, Übertreibungen, Ironie, Travestie«. Gufler greift diese Stilmittel in seinen Arbeiten auf. Dabei wird er nicht zu einem »Für-Sprecher«, sondern im Gegenteil zu einem Sprecher, der mit den anderen zusammen spricht. Er formuliert Andeutungen, die einen Raum für das Werk Rabes und D’Armagnacs schaffen, und er verfremdet diesen Raum, um mit der eigenen Sprache die Idee einer Künstleridentität zu destabilisieren.

 ////////////////////////////

»Setz dein Ich in Anführungsstriche« (Put your I in quotation marks) is Philipp Gufler's first institutional solo show. The title references Hubert Fichte's "Essay on puberty" (1974) with the excerpt, "Just put your I in quotation marks – call yourself a ‘novel’", which adds an analytical distance to his otherwise literary advancements in order to question his own (partly autobiographical) approach. Philipp Gufler appropriates a similar gesture when handling the exhibition content: The work deals with two artistic positions from the 1970's and 80's – Rabe Perplexum in Munich and Ben d'Armagnac in Holland, whose performances and artistic oeuvre can nowadays only be perceived fragmentarily. It is a personal technique, which through its immediacy still manages to preserve an artistic distance; a layering, without losing the artistic identity of its subjects.

The method Gufler applies does not follow art historical norms nor make use of reenactments, instead he attempts to create a kind of artistic doubling. His interest lies not in the repetition of a performance, rather he uses his own artistic praxis to sound out the persona behind the performance. "Becoming-Rabe" is a video installation in which Gufler takes on the role of artist Rabe Perplexum, wherein the resulting identity-merge does not occur on a linear basis, but through poetic mimesis using archival footage and Rabe's performance props.

The motive of doubling and layering is a common denominator throughout Gufler's exhibition. The merging of layers, visual as well as temporal and identitarian, manages to break with the common (scientific) understanding of history. Gufler's disregard of artistic identities as finalized, historical entities allows him the freedom to update, change and realign these. His work is not a production of identitarian fixation, but instead blurs the borders between the artist's self and the subject – a gesture which is also reflected in his series of quilts and elaborated on for the viewer in a sequence of silkscreened mirrors. The resulting reflections within the space add an additional layer to the exhibition's conceptual discourse.

Fichte wrote of Henry James that, "Gay language is inauthentic, it is a form of indirect speech", consisting of "innuendoes, alienation, exaggerations, irony, travesty". Gufler appropriates these stylistic devices, speaking with them, not for them. Gufler's individual language of intimations creates a space for the work of Rabe and D'Armagnac, whilst at the same time defamiliarizing it, in order to ultimately destabilize any form of artistic identity.


Kuratiert von Anja Lückenkemper

KUNSTVEREIN GÖTTINGEN

im Künstlerhaus

Gotmarstraße 1
37073 Göttingen

ÖFFNUNGSZEITEN

Di-Fr 14-18 Uhr, Sa/So 11-17 Uhr

VERNISSAGE
So, 19. Juni 2016, 11.30 Uhr

http://www.kunstvereingoettingen.de/ 

Fotos: Lucie Marsmann