NYC | MUC | BER : Destination Murnau

NYC | MUC | BER : Destination Murnau

 

The exhibition NYC | MUC | BER : Destination Murnau at PULPO GALLERY stages a confluence of artistic practices that oscillate between the material and the conceptual, the personal and the collective. It is an exhibition about dialogues-between cities, disciplines, and forms-and how these exchanges resonate within a shared space. Murnau, with its layered cultural and natural histories, becomes the grounding point for this interplay of ideas and aesthetics.

 

Marco Stanke's work challenges the boundaries of painting by creating "pictorial things" that blur the line between image and object. His pieces from the series Kollektiv - each called a  „Teil" -  are not standalone gestures; they actively seek connections, forming constellations with other works. Within this exhibition, Stanke's deconstructed forms echo Judy Rifka's spatial investigations, much like how Rifka's work engaged with Ron Gorchov's shaped canvases 50 years ago. While Stanke's works push outward, rejecting the confines of the frame, Rifka's Single Shape paintings condense energy, drawing the viewer into the dynamism of a single form. Together, their works establish a rhythmic dialogue-a tension and release-that animates the gallery space.

 

Michael Ullrich's contributions, particularly the hauntingly visceral Burning Flower #2, introduce a performative and ephemeral element into this conversation. His exploration of light and motion in Master and Servant and the collaborative music video with DJ Hell and Jonathan Meese infuses the exhibition with a temporal dimension, heightening the awareness of movement and transition. The flicker of flames in his photography mirrors the vibrancy of Rifka's color fields, while his multimedia pieces intersect conceptually with Stanke's interrogation of boundaries-here between permanence and impermanence, image and spectacle.

 

Curator Sara Dahme situates these distinct practices within a shared environment, creating a space where the energy of New York, Munich, and Berlin converges in Murnau. The artworks do not merely coexist; they interact. Stanke's collective "pictorial things" find balance in Rifka's centrifugal forces, while Ullrich's multimedia and photographic works act as a connective tissue, tying together the material and the ephemeral, the real and the imagined.

 

This exhibition is a meditation on connection: how artists from different cultural and geographical loci come together to create a shared language of movement, form, and material. It is not merely a presentation of artworks but a living organism, where each piece draws energy from the other. In Murnau, this confluence becomes a moment of transformation-a reminder that art, like nature, thrives in the spaces where boundaries dissolve.