Ull mockery – a eternal stirring

And a little sublime white comes into the sky, a little more of the mysterious green in the tops, the tree trunks tolerate even more of the earthy, vital, strong brown tone. And so on and so on. Millions of television socialized remember the meditative painting school of the American Bob Ross, who encouraged hobbyists from all countries to express themselves a little with landscape painting after work. Trouble, patience, a few tricks – and the natural decoration made of acrylic or oil is ready.

For a few weeks now, an exhibition in the house on the Waldsee has been advertised in Berlin with a painting that shows a mountain from which a stream disappears from the picture and trees can be seen. That looks like Ross, but at second glance the irritation begins: the white on the mountain is a bit thick, the flora on the river is blurred in a diffuse green darkness and the waves on the water promise a dynamic that contradicts the rigid motif as if it wanted to go out of the idyll of landscape painting.

This is a painting by Ull Hohn, born in 1960 in Trier. He initially studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, then moved to Düsseldorf, became a student of Gerhard Richter, and in 1986 took part in the WHITNEY Museum’s scholarship program in New York City. In 1995 he died in Berlin from the consequences of AIDS. To date, he has not even received a Wikipedia article. It is a great deal of merit from the house on the Waldsee, the curator Anna Gritz and the Foundation for Between Bridges initiated by photographer Wolfgang Tillmann, the painter Ull Hohn finally, 30 years after his death, with the solo exhibition »Revisions«.

Mountain and forest idylls of failure, slowly eaten by the yellow, dissolved in sepiat tones.

In his landscape painting, Hohn hikes traditional imaging claims and the contradictory requirement of reproducible natural beauty in art through visual abstraction: The mountain and forest idylls sometimes create the impression that yellowed photos would disappear in their inevitable, slowly eaten from yellow, dissolved in sepiat tones. They are idylls in apocalypse, here and there the shape while a landscape painting could still find buyers who want to enjoy the contours of a fir until the bitter end. Hohn creates smooth surfaces for some of these work, which are reminiscent of photo films from which the view could slip.

Hohn picturesquely linked a criticism of art business commerce, discourse elitism and rigid ideas of naturalness. A strong contrast to these paintings is a more than man-high work of plaster and varnish: There are scratch, pulling, grinding traces on monochrome rectangles, are it perhaps the defendations of a struggle for a forbidden figure? The gay historian John Boswell is quoted on a text board, who dealt with Christian positions on homosexuality.

On the first floor there are some representations of bustleless penises that are painted, but are reminiscent of woodcuts, and that slowly moss, could be lazy, where they have to be hard as a tree trunk. As a sophisticated criticism of ingenious male addiction addiction, the large gestures of abstract expressionism, for example, small tableau can be understood from paint, on which countless layers come together in one another, but finally dried color come together: an eternal stirring, which means interpretation, on the one hand is fat, but is also quite fragile.

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Hohn reflects his own career as a painter, perhaps in consciousness not long by painting early attempts to still live, shoe and plant sketches again, trusting less and less colors, giving up abstraction cautiously, brings off, but does not let go of the motives of early attempts. A work shows an apparently suffering baby, without parents, on the ground that is painted in a style that strongly reminds of Gerhard Richter’s pictures in which he painted and blurred photos. Hohn’s choice of motif brings a second if you want to use body political abyss in the process of his teacher.

Two years before his death, Ull Hohn had an exhibition in the New York Gallery American Fine Arts, Co., for which he actually created pictures after the then world-famous Bob-Ross method, whose kitsch romanticism he was then unable to. He also coated the back of the frame with a filler, but left the name of the frame manufacturer free. The painter Ull Hohn has been a subtle criticism of the institution, for example when he paints expensive handicrafts in oil like a vase, the surrounding area, the sales place, but the people are spared and only indicates a few lines of edges and corners of rooms and suggests the viewer in this way that there is even more than the expensive object of desire.

The myth of “championship/formation/final style” is also questioned by mockery, without malice and know -it -all, with the installation “nine landscapes”, which decided in the US To disappear, just like too often copied photos.

Apparently bursts on the opposite wall from a miserable wooden frame pastose brown mass: is it shit or chocolate? Is it a fecal game of the minimal way?

In truth, it is painted plaster. Figurative, figurative, somewhere -meaningful heritage of painting and conceptual abstract (childish? Only cheeky?) Avancy in this room step into a violent tension, questions of pollution and mythical primeval power may float from heads, a feeling that cannot catch up with a discourse.

This is the last room of the “revision”. The exhibition is excellently curated, the selection of the work and its division into the premises let how Hohn’s work developed without wanting to progress blindly. Those who do not visit this exhibition miss a lot.

Ull mockery. Revisions. Haus am Waldsee, Argentinian Allee 30, 14163 Berlin, until May 31, 2025