AURA

Whereas hitherto there were mainly on and off states in his illuminated boxes, the new works seem to breathe through a pulsating fading in and fading out. When the light fades in, the semi-transparent surfaces of these painting-hybrids open an illusion of spatiality and depth. Apart from the recurring motif of the forest, x-rays and computer tomography images of the human body repeatedly come to the fore. Meshes of arteries are superimposed on the branches and undergrowth of a forest; contours of trees come and torsos go; cell structures turn into the remains of leaves. Thoughts rush from romantic paintings of a Rousseau, a Friedrich or Courbet to the fragility and bizarre aloofness from our own body. Fürhofer underscores this interplay of the artistic topos of the forest with medical images through the titles of his works: Twilight, Circulation, Guerrilla Forest, EXCHANGE and Natural Beauty. Here the conceptual intertwining of the organisms, forest and body, is manifest that Fürhofer allows to coexist also visually.

His illuminated boxes are illusion machines that present to us the circulation between the inside and the outside. For a few seconds, they entice us with the long superseded idea of meaning and unity in order, only a few seconds later, to disillusion us through their rough construction out of everyday products and waste. Sunrises, rainbows, waterfalls and clouds are here made artificially out of cables and lamps; the sudden flash of the romantic idea of living in harmony with nature is rudely unmasked as kitsch.

Since 2008 Fürhofer has been working in parallel as the stage and costume designer for the Royal Danish Theatre Copenhagen, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Finnish National Opera Helsinki, De Nationale Opera Amsterdam, the Royal Opera House in London, among many others. Simultaneously with our gallery exhibition, Philipp Fürhofer designed the two prelude rooms for the Thierry Mugler retrospective Couturissime at Kunsthalle Munich (until 30 August).