BERLIN.- For Ull Hohn, painting was far more than just an artistic form—it was a space where discourse, techniques, and personal reflections intertwined. At a time when painting was widely seen as an exhausted medium, Hohn sought renewal from within. In his works from the late 1980s and early 1990s, he explored the connections between formal and political approaches to art through several series of paintings. He experimented with forms of representation that probed the boundaries of mass media appropriation and the tension between virtuosity and amateurism, opening painting to self-questioning.

A recurring theme in Hohn’s work—which spans figurative and abstract compositions—is his critical engagement with traditional painterly tropes, particularly landscape art. Redefining notions of nature and naturalness and consciously tying them to current debates such as the heated discourses of the Culture Wars in New York in the 1990s and the activism surrounding the AIDS epidemic, Hohn explicitly addressed his own homosexuality.

In the final years of his life, Ull Hohn focused on the series Revisions (1994–95), which lends its title to this exhibition. Here, he revisited early works from his youth, reinterpreting classical motifs such as interiors, everyday objects, and still lifes from the perspective of a mature artist. This series can be seen as an artistic reflection on his personal development and life as an artist—a biography already overshadowed by illness. Hohn died in 1995 at the age of thirty-five from AIDS-related complications. With this return to his artistic beginnings, he deliberately created a kind of autobiographical narrative, extending his method of stylistic appropriation to his own earlier works.

The exhibition at the Haus am Waldsee offers a comprehensive overview of the various phases of the artist’s tragically short career and includes rarely seen works from his early years. True to Hohn’s vision, it brings together different series of paintings, allowing them to enrich one another conceptually.

Curated by Anna Gritz / Supported by Haus am Waldsee – Freunde und Förderer e.V., Between Bridges, Stiftung Stark