After his studies at the arts academies in Berlin and Düsseldorf, Ull Hohn (1960–1995) moved to New York to attend the Whitney Independent Study Program in 1987. Engaging with current theoretical debates and cultural issues, his work from the late 1980s and early 1990s frequently invokes questions of gender and homosexuality, as well as their representation. It interrogates the history of painting, traditional notions of virtuosity, the conventions of value and taste inherent to education, and the distinction between high and popular culture.

Ull Hohn: Foregrounds, Distances aims not only to offer the first comprehensive overview of his work, but also to contribute to a history of painting-based practices, which occupy a marginal place in the established narratives of the art of the 1980s and 1990s.

Edited by Hannes Loichinger and Magnus Schaefer. Texts by Tom Burr, Thomas Eggerer, Manfred Hermes, Hannes Loichinger, Fionn Meade, Magnus Schaefer, Megan Francis Sullivan, Lanka Tattersall, and Alexis Vaillant.

Produced on the occasion of Group Material: Market at Kunstverein München, 6 May–18 June, 1995. From the early 1980s, Group Material worked on complex social and cultural issues: in 1988, for example, they developed a four-part project on today’s understanding of democracy, followed by a so-called AIDS timeline. For Kunstverein München they developed a new project about consumption. The space was modelled after a shopping mall and contained products of the commodity world, which were collected by Group Material and commented on in the exhibition.