Philipp Gufler blends art with activism and history education. His research-based artistic work centers on the study of queer life and the aesthetic practices of LGBTQIA+ movements. To investigate them, the artist harnesses pop-cultural and literary references and translates knowledge gleaned from mass media and historical archives into videos, silkscreen prints, installations, and performances. Besides documentary evidence from the media, the materials out of which he makes his works include interviews with contemporary witnesses, artists, activists, and theorists. Gufler’s critical studies draw connections between historic attitudes toward queer identity and their relevance to current debates as well as institutional critique. Designed by Yvonne Quirmbach.

Projektion Auf Die Krise (Projection on the Crisis) takes a kaleidoscopic and retrospective look at the early days of the AIDS crisis in Germany during the 1980s—a time in which Munich’s repressive policies against gay people reached its peak: the arrival of the pandemic in Germany and the Bavarian response to it, consisting of a catalogue of measures which envisioned forced testing and separation, instigated by Peter Gauweiler who was Bavarian Secretary of State at the time.

Historic documents from the Forum Queeres Archiv München, assembled by Philipp Gufler, are arranged in chronological order and augmented by conversations with Guido Vael and Dr.med. Hans Jäger alongside contemporary works of fellow artists including Maximiliane Baumgartner, Stephan Janitzky, Gürsoy Doğtaş amongst others. The revised second edition also contains essays by Albert Knoll and Hendrik Folkerts, as well as, for the first time, an English translation of the German original texts.

Part of a large cycle comprised of different series of polyptychs with the subject matter of marble graves without any reference to dates, places or names, Sophie Calle encourages a reflection on those relationships that, in their presence or absence, define each person’s identity. Even though anonymous, each tomb in the series contains a real body that was once a person and remains alive as a memory and as a site allowing the opportunity to worship that memory by the survivors.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Pierre Klossowski: Les Barres Parallèles et autres situations de Roberte at Galerie André François Petit, Paris, November–December, 1978.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

Produced on the occasion of documenta 7, 19 June–28 September, 1982.

Pierre Klossowski was a French writer, translator and artist. A prolific late in life artist who was internationally acclaimed for his writings and translations on Sadeian erotic expression, Klossowski is a pivotal yet underrepresented figure in the history of 20th-century art, often overshadowed by his earlier literary work and his younger brother, Balthus. Primarily working with pencil and charcoal, the laborious drawings he produced reference a variety of subjects, including Greek mythology, Sadean decadence, medieval fantasy and sexualized scenarios involving a recurring female figure, Roberte. These imagined scenes depict a perplexing and intriguing array of mature, familiar and fantastical situations involving cartoonish human figures set in fictitious landscapes that uniquely relate back to the dystopic realities he creates.

Optimundus accompanies Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys’s major exhibition at M HKA of the same title—the term they use for their particular conception of the parallel world. Narratives and criticism by Michael Van den Abeele, Nav Haq, Jennifer Krasinksi, Dieter Roelstraete, and artist Peter Wächtler are presented along with photos, drawings, and text illustrating the unsteady barriers and tense contact between Optimundus and the real world.