Philipp Fürhofer
Phantom Islands

In Fürhofer’s works, nature presents itself as a place of the longing for perfection and the continuation of the ecosystem for all eternity. Many of his works are distinguished by a cyclical narrative structure ranging from growth to decay. His light boxes, in which the swelling and ebbing light reveals various sceneries, are a case in point. With his motifs the artist activates our pop-cultural visual memory, for example by processing picture postcards, idyllic landscape images, film posters and the like and has them reappear in his works in abstracted form.

The work “Phantom Island” (2023) forms the centre of the exhibition. It enters into dialogue with the exhibition space and its architectural elements, including the prominent columns. The lengths of vinyl depict a gloomy natural landscape that is also reminiscent of Romanticism’s melancholy imagery. Through reflections on the mirrored wall behind (John Armleder, “Mosaic Mirror Wall Piece”, 1991–2012), slogans like “Sexy” and “Forever Young” appear, set pieces from the vocabulary of a world shaped by capitalism.

A key element of Philipp Fürhofer’s art is light. In this context, X-ray images play a decisive role. Light boxes of the kind used for medical purposes serve the artist as picture supports. At the Städel Museum he is presenting five works consisting, for the most part, of one or more acrylic glass boxes, spy mirrors and LED tubes. Thanks to his use of controller boxes, the works take on a processual dimension: the painting gradually appears as the light brightens over the course of a few seconds, only to disappear again a moment later. The dramatically coloured jungle paths in works such as “Fluids and Bypass” (both 2023) initially hold the promise of faraway and supposedly carefree worlds. When the light fades, the motifs on the front of the acrylic glass box come into view, revealing human veins, ribs, neurons and the like. Now the reflective effect of the built-in spy mirror dominates, and with it the image of the beholder—whose reflection disintegrates again when the light returns.

In his paintings as well, Fürhofer embeds the human being, in all their mortality and vulnerability, in the midst of nature. Contrary pictorial realities unite and pose the question as to the seeming versus the real. An ambiguity emerges between the supposed perfection of nature and the human urge to optimize. In “Ersatzwelt” and “Burning” (both 2022), for instance, the artist has employed a complex layering process to create dystopian images combining a tropical sunset with a sky brightened by a forest fire. Elsewhere he has layers of paint burst open to reveal threatening scenarios behind a seemingly peaceful world, as in “Carbonization” (2022). The consequences of the Anthropocene become visible in “Ohne Titel” (2022): idyllic seascapes and seaside landscapes break into pieces that disperse like floes of ice, exposing images of supermarkets and advertising slogans. Traces of paint define the surface of the work as such and cause the painterly natural scenery to disintegrate along with the hopes attached to it. Fürhofer’s paintings turn out to be illusory constructs: nature’s peaceful eternity is devoured by ulcerations incised in the work’s surface.