The Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Shows Paul Laffoley's "Secret Universe"

Written by Helmut Vehrkersampel Wednesday, 09 November 2011 22:50

Berlin.-  The Hamburger Bahnhof is pleased to present "Secret Universe II: Paul Laffoley" on view through March 4th 2012. In the exhibition series entitled "Secret Universe", the Hamburger Bahnhof is dedicating itself to artists who have largely gone unnoticed within the established art discourse and will feature them in monographic projects. The second exhibition in this series presents works by the American artist and architect Paul Laffoley (born 1940). Since the mid-1960s, Laffoley has confronted scientific, philosophical and spiritual matters in his work with equal verve. He studied art history, history, philosophy and architecture and spent more than 38 years living in a one-room apartment in Boston, which he dubbed the 'Boston Visionary Cell'. He is influenced in his work by his collaboration with the visionary architect Frederick Kiesler, as well as by the theories of Buckminster Fuller and C.G. Jung and the literature of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and William Blake. Another factor that has left a mark on his work is the fact that Laffoley was once engaged by Andy Warhol to watch television through the night on his behalf so that he could keep abreast of events.

In his mostly large-scale works on canvas, Paul Laffoley devises complex theories and fantastical scenarios on time travel, the 4th or 5th dimension and cosmological and astrological questions. In accomplishing this, he creates diagrams, display charts or rigidly geometrically structured compositions in which text and image are woven together to form a whole. Underlying his elaborately structured paintings are multi-layered reflections, covering several disciplines at once, which he first lays down in writing before transposing them to a pictorial form. Since 1966, his work has been presented in numerous solo and group shows in the USA, South America and Europe. Drawing on a deep fund of knowledge, ranging from physical and mathematical phenomena across science fiction, architecture, alchemy and religion all the way to esotericism, Laffoley immortalizes his models of knowledge on canvas. In a combination of words, symbols, diagrams and pictorial quotations, he creates a dense weave of text and images whose thematic gravity is relaxed by the playfulness of his sometimes gaudily bright colours and symmetrical arrangements. Each of his pictures provides an insight into the heart of Paul Laffoley’s thought, which the beholder can follow with fascination.


To decipher it requires a transdisciplinary and encyclopaedic knowledge. Laffoley uses explanatory texts to put across to beholders the many-layered content of his works. In the process, he covers various thematic complexes time and again, creating works that examine a spirituality characterized by Oriental mysticism, feature utopias and time travel, and depict model operating systems. As the basis for his artistic investigations, he uses on the one hand his study of art history, ancient history, philosophy and architecture, and on the other decades of research and confrontation with widely varied fields of knowledge. In addition, in 1992, a CT scan revealed a piece of metal, about a centimetre long, in Paul Laffoley’s brain. For him it was an extraterrestrial chip, with which he could send and receive messages about our universe. Paul Laffoley is an artist, architect, cosmologist and visionary. Today's exhibition in the Hamburger Bahnhof is the first solo show in Europe of the artist who still lives in Boston.

The Hamburger Bahnhof was built in 1874 as one of Berlin's rail heads, but already by 1906 it was found to be too small for a station and was converted into a museum. Located in "no man's land" between East and West Berlin, the Hamburger Bahnhof remained unused after the Second World War. Successive restoration began only after the GDR handed the building over to the City of Berlin in 1984. In 1987, the Hamburger Bahnhof was assigned to the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage). The 1989 competition for the conversion of the building was won by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues, a museum specialist who designed an ideal concept for the multi-functional usage of the new museum. The large entrance hall serves as a central space for orientation and leads to all other parts of the building. From there, one can reach the two-storey western wing of the cour d'honneur, the ground floor of which serves as a permanent exhibition space dedicated to the work of Joseph Beuys. The eastern wing contains a restaurant and events forum. The great hall and the modern galleries are used for special exhibitions. Since September 2004, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection with its first-class masterpieces is on permanent loan to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin) and shown in the neighbouring Rieck halls. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de

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