Haus am Waldsee shows from January 31, 2025 the exhibition Revisions by the artist Ull Hohn (1960-1995). It is curated by the director of Haus am Waldsee Anna Gritz.
Image above: Ull Hohn, Untitled, 1993. Öl auf Leinwand, 45,5 x 61 cm.
For Ull Hohn, painting was far more than just an artistic medium – it was a field in which discourse, painterly techniques and personal reflections intertwined. At a time when painting was considered an exhausted medium in many places, Hohn initiated a renewal that emerged from the practice itself. In his works from the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hohn explored the connections between formal and political issues such as physicality and sexuality. He experimented with painterly forms of representation that moved between mass media appropriation and the tension between virtuosity and amateurism, opening up painting to self-questioning.
A recurring theme in Hohn’s work, which ranges from figurative painting to abstract compositions, is the critical examination of traditional painterly issues – especially those of landscape painting. Ideas of nature and naturalness were constantly renegotiated and consciously brought together with current debates. For example, Hohn explicitly addressed his own homosexuality, fueled by the raging discourse of the culture wars in New York in the 1990s and the activism of the AIDS epidemic.
In the last years of his life, Ull Hohn devoted himself to the series of works entitled Revisions, which lends this exhibition its title. Hohn drew on early works from his youth and took a fresh look at classic motifs such as interiors, everyday objects and still lifes from the perspective of a mature artist. It can be understood as an artistic reflection on his personal development and life as an artist at a time when he was already heavily overshadowed by his own illness. Hohn died in 1995 at the age of thirty-five as a result of AIDS. For Hohn, returning to his artistic beginnings was a deliberate act of creating a kind of biographical narrative and extending his earlier stylistic appropriations to his works.
Curated by Anna Gritz, director of Haus am Waldsee, the exhibition sheds light on the tension between formal dedication and the examination of current artistic and political discourses. Questions about the relevance of painting and positioning as an artist, especially with regard to one’s own identity, shaped Hohn’s artistic path and are still of central importance for subsequent generations of artists today. In 2023, Haus am Waldsee presented a selection of Ull Hohn’s works as part of the exhibition Bruno Pélassy and the Order of the Starfish.
Ull Hohn (*1960 in Trier; †1995 in Berlin) initially studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin (1980) before continuing his artistic training at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Gerhard Richter’s class (1984). He then moved to New York, where he took part in the Whitney Independent Study Program (1987). As early as the 1990s, his work was exhibited in important New York galleries such as White Columns, the Stux Gallery and American Fine Arts. Even after his death, his work was exhibited in renowned galleries and institutions, including Greene Naftali in New York (2023), Kunsthalle Bern (2016), Peephole, Milan (2015), Galerie Neu, Berlin (2015, 2006, 2000), Algus Greenspon, New York (2010), Between Bridges, London (2009), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (1996), as well as in group exhibitions such as at the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2023), Mumok, Vienna (2015), Museum Brandhorst (2015), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2015) and the Sculpture Center, New York (2011).
WHEN?
Vernissage: Thursday, 30. January 2025, 19 pm.
Exhibition dates: Friday, 31. January – Sunday, 11. May 2025.
WHERE?
Haus am Waldsee
Argentinische Allee 30
14163 Berlin
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