Robert Elfgen
Painting without painting
Sprüth Magers and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König

“I actually work like a sculptor. For my paintings, I use solid materials like wood or brass, which I can stain, saw off, and shape.”

Robert Elfgen doesn’t paint his paintings, he builds them. The brightly illustrated catalogue Robert Elfgen: Painting without painting is devoted to the artistic idea that leads Elfgen to his images. Through 34 color plates, 40 illustrations, and a comprehensive text contribution, this catalogue demonstrates Elfgen’s understanding of the image as embedded in the history of painting—from the Middle Ages through Romanticism to the 21st century. The catalogue also features hitherto unpublished works by the artist.

Mondi Possibili
A Tribute to Pasquale Leccese (1957–2023)
August 31–September 14, 2023
Seoul

Henni Alftan, John Baldessari, Cao Fei, Thomas Demand, Thea Djordjadze, Lucy Dodd, Robert Elfgen, Peter Fischli  David Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Karen Kilimnik, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, David Ostrowski, Michail Pirgelis, Sterling Ruby, Thomas Scheibitz, Andreas Schulze, Hyun-Sook Song, Robert Therrien, Rosemarie Trockel, Kaari Upson, Andrea Zittel

Mondi Possibili highlights the interplay between art and design and explores the many ways in which experimentation with material, technique and scale can reveal the hidden narratives, quiet drama and humor in the everyday items that furnish our lives as well as our imaginations. Connected through a paradigm of the possible, all artworks on show examine familiar objects – citing, celebrating, adapting or appropriating them – offering surprising, playful or unsettling approaches that open up a range of “possible worlds.” This will be the fourth edition of Sprüth Magers’ Mondi Possibili – first titled by Pasquale Leccese (1957–2023), as a tribute to his lifetime achievement – showcasing significant themes in the selected artists’ works as well as the gallery’s longstanding heritage. Its three previous iterations were presented in 1989, 2006 and 2007 in Cologne, where the gallery’s history is firmly rooted, and art and design have intersected for many decades.

Robert Elfgen
Higgs-Boson
April 28–August 5, 2021
Berlin

Sprüth Magers is delighted to present the solo exhibition Higgs-Boson by Robert Elfgen featuring new paintings at Sprüth Magers Window. Elfgen’s new paintings are reminiscent of romantic landscapes. The grain of the wooden base is visible through their metallic shimmering surfaces, so that the material becomes part of the work in the form of sky or water. 

The exhibition's title alludes to the elementary particle Higgs-Boson, also called “the God particle,” which is highly complicated to detect: it is always there but only visible under certain constellations for a fleeting moment. In his new paintings, Elfgen refers to this phenomenon by challenging the idea of what is invisible in the visible.

Robert Elfgen
I wish my pictures
November 15, 2014–January 17, 2015
Berlin

In I wish my pictures, Elfgen's new exhibition at Sprüth Magers in Berlin, two thematic strands emerge into the foreground which have been latently present in his œuvre for a long time: the importance of landscape for our being-in-the-world, and the processes with which we perceive or do not perceive this world. A large assemblage sculpture, illumanted by a streetlamp protruding from the wall, is the first sight when entering the room. The exhibition reveals itself under the watchful eye of a circular mirror, into which intarsia has been inserted resembling a pupil. Landscape paintings and assemblages, the latter standing on the ground, guide through the two-parted exhibition space.

Robert Elfgen
Development
April 27–June 16, 2012
Berlin

Robert Elfgen focuses on the relationship between nature, human beings, and society. Biographical experiences and everyday observations serve the artist as the point of departure for his works. When the viewer enters one of his space-related installations, the sculptures, assemblages, collages, and films are linked associatively and transformed into spatial allegories which make it possible to experience a private mythology. Transitional situations, social threshold-rituals, the cycle of nature, and the shifts of aggregate states: material and immaterial transfers provide the motifs for his symbolic, often whimsical visual worlds.

Robert Elfgen
grenzübergang
May 2–June 20, 2009
Berlin

In a continuation of the artist’s interest in imaginary sites and their opening-up, the image of a quiet crossing constitutes the background to Elfgen’s new work. The situation of the passage, together with the narrative framework associated with it, is established through the arrangement of found and produced objects involving highly diverse materials. An illuminated ensemble consisting of a kayak along with picture- and light-objects takes possession of the exhibition space and engenders an intensive but also indefinite spatial feeling. Elfgen thereby creates a place which can be left behind, but which also contains the possibility of being rediscovered.

Robert Elfgen
Antriebswelle
May 13–June 19, 2008
London

Elfgen's wooden panels, paintings and sculptures reflect his immediate, handcrafted approach to art; they oscillate between perfection and improvisation. Elfgen explores his main subjects, nature and above all the symbolism of animals, in a romantic way, rooted on the one hand in the German tradition of 19th century idealism and on the other in the artist's autobiography.

Robert Elfgen
des bien ich
April 16–July 26, 2008
Cologne

Des bien ich is the first solo exhibition of Robert Elfgen at Sprüth Magers' gallery in Cologne. After his studies at the Academy of Arts in Braunschweig (class of John Armleder) and at the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf (class of Rosemarie Trockel), the artist realized solo exhibitions in Cologne (Simultanhalle), London (Westlondonprojects) and in Munich (Sprüth Magers Projects) as well as projects in public spaces. Robert Elfgen received the Peter-Mertes-Stipendium of the Bonner Kunstfonds, the studio scholarship of the Bonner Kunstverein and the award of the federal state NRW for young artists. Robert Elfgen lives and works in Cologne.