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until 04.07. | #5056ARTatBerlin | BQ Berlin shows from Saturday, 02. May 2026 (Opening: 01.05.) the exhibition Imitationen von Paul by the artist Philipp Gufler.
Very few biographies leave behind a complete archive. Most exist primarily as traces – in images, in relationships, in what is repeated, quoted or concealed. Philipp Gufler’s work engages precisely with these gaps and integrates fragments of history and stories into his artistic practice. For the exhibition ‘Imitations of Paul’, he enters into a dialogue with the painter Paul Hoecker (1854–1910), whose life and work were long marginalised and whose extensive oeuvre has still not been fully catalogued to this day. Hoecker’s career came to an abrupt end in 1898 after his homosexuality threatened to become public knowledge.
In “Imitations of Paul”, Gufler takes Hoecker’s multifaceted biography as the starting point for an act of artistic identification. The fabric and ceramic works on display explore how new forms, images and narratives can be developed from fragmentary, archival traces. Here, however, imitation does not appear as mere mimicry, but – drawing on the art form of drag – as a practice of appropriation, exaggeration and transformation: as a productive process that creates closeness, acknowledges difference and, through repetition, brings forth something original.
In contrast to narratives that claim closure, Gufler’s works conceive of history as an open structure that can be rewritten and shifted through artistic reference. A new framework emerges through the deliberate reworking of motifs, attitudes and gestures.
Whilst the textile work “Imitations of Paul” lends an almost ghostly presence to the gallery space through Hoecker’s previously known works in the form of semi-transparent textile screen prints, Gufler breaks new ground with his ceramic series *Sexual Aesthetics*. Here, images from and about Hoecker’s life meet art-historical and socio-historical visual references drawn from the extensive image collections associated with the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. The motifs cited revolve around pleasure and sexuality, ranging from prehistoric cave paintings through medieval and modern art to early 20th-century photographs. Gufler thus combines Höcker’s painting “Ave Maria” with, among other things, a woodcut depicting the torture of people whose partly lustful facial expressions, however, are reminiscent less of suffering than of the Marquis de Sade. These works break away from a biographical interpretation in the narrower sense. They function associatively.
Both the fabric and ceramic works are characterised by a distinct physicality: The fabric work showcases Hoecker’s known oeuvre to date and, despite the material’s lightness, lends the motifs an undeniable presence; the white fabric brings together all the motifs known to researchers to date, whilst the black fabric displays those motifs that are currently considered lost or destroyed, or whose current owners the Paul Hoecker Research Group has so far been unable to trace. Gufler produced screen prints on a full scale of each painting through physically demanding processes. He also employs the screen-printing technique in the ceramic works, layering the motifs on top of one another between the individual firing stages, which are ultimately partially concealed again by the highly glossy glaze. This deliberate interplay of concealment and revelation gains an additional spatial dimension through the use of stamps, transforming the works into reliefs. With their pronounced materiality, the ceramic works form a compelling complement to the seemingly immaterial fabric pieces.
As a founding member of the Paul Hoecker Research Group, Gufler is himself involved in the collective research into Hoecker’s life and work. This collaborative production of knowledge forms a key backdrop to the exhibition and is exemplified by a compilation of relevant archival materials in the final exhibition space. Gufler ultimately translates the insights gained through this collaborative effort into his own distinct artistic perspective. The exhibition thus unfolds within the tension between collective knowledge production, individual authorship and the critical reflection on a long-marginalised artist’s biography.
Accompanying the exhibition is the publication *Traces of Paul* (Splitter 19), produced by Forum Queeres Archiv München in collaboration with BQ, which brings together the exhibition and research as a performative collective endeavour. Through the polyphony of texts and images, Paul Hoecker emerges as part of an open-ended process of ongoing historical and artistic re-examination.
Opening: Friday, 1. May 2026, 6-9 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 2. May until Saturday, 4. July 2026
Book presentation: Saturday, 2. May 2026, 3 pm
To the gallery
Title image caption: Philipp Gufler, “Sexualästhetiken 2”, 2025, Ceramics, glazed 57 x 38 x 1 cm, Courtesy BQ, Berlin. Photography by Roman März.
Exhibition Philipp Gufler – BQ Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
