Meet the Artist: Philipp Fürhofer and His “The Truths Behind“

Philipp Fürhofer, born in Augsburg in 1982, has become a major figure in the national and international art scene over the last years. His name has become synonymous with a body of work that uses glass, mirrors, and light to create highly aesthetic and enigmatic effects.

Four such light boxes – in which complex light cycles transform acrylic glass, mirrors, and impasto
painting into living organisms – are also on view in our exhibition, the artist’s third with Galerie Judin. First and foremost, it presents a group of works that revitalizes the traditional format of panel painting using the artist’s familiar visual language resulting in what could be understood as a summary of his previous practice.

Despite all these technical and stylistic novelties, Fürhofer has stayed true to his canon of motifs. As with the light boxes, his work continues to revolve around the ever changing relationship between man and nature. However, Fürhofer’s interest in cycles – evident in the light circuits – has literally faded out. Instead, he focusses on the concurrency of phenomena. In a sense, we are dealing with the “simultaneity of the non-simultaneous,” as the neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch proclaimed. Fürhofer no longer depicts the succession but the coincidence of idyllic, romanticizing landscapes and dystopian abysses. An uncomfortable idea that we should get accustomed to.

About the Gallery

Galerie Judin, which has been based in Berlin since 2008, was founded in Zurich in 2003. Its very first exhi­bi­tion, Barry Le Va—A Sur­vey of Draw­ings 1966—2003 & Two New Sculp­tures proved to be exemplary for Juerg Judin’s inter­ests and inten­tions: a contemporary view of under­rated oeuvres in recent art history, elab­o­rately produced exhibi­tions and carefully researched pub­lica­tions, a program in which con­tem­po­rary art gets to hold its own along­side great names of twenti­eth century art—and a concentration on the “tradi­tional” media of paint­ing, draw­ing and sculp­ture. Par­tic­u­larly works on paper, Judin’s great pas­sion as a col­lector, have always been given much space: Exhi­bitions with a retro­spec­tive char­ac­ter have been ded­icated to the drafts­man­ship of Richard Artschwager, Carroll Dunham and Eugen Schönebeck, to name just a few.

Among the younger painters rep­re­sented by the gallery, fig­u­ra­tivism can be identi­fied as the unifying ele­ment. This common thread runn­ing through the program resists the trend of the times just as much as the restraint the gallery has exercised in growing its stable of artists. From 2008 to 2013 a partn­er­ship with New York gal­lerist David Nolan enabled much-acclaimed exhibitions such as George Grosz—The Years in Amer­ica and Mar­tin Kip­penberger—The Complete Poster Portfo­lios. Since 2016, Judin has run the gallery jointly with art historian Pay Matthis Karstens. Two ambi­tious long-term projects have emerged from this collab­o­ra­tion: the com­pi­la­tion of the cat­a­logue raisonnés for Eugen Schönebeck and Michael Buthe, who died in 1994.

Follow the Artist on @PhilippFuerhofer and discover more work by the Artist.