Philipp Stähle

Philipp Stähle (*1982 in Munich) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich from 2010 to 2017 under Günther Förg, Mathias Dornfeld, and Gregor Hildebrandt. In 2017, he completed his master's degree as a master student under Gregor Hildebrandt. Already during his studies, he received formative impulses through projects with Kerstin Brätsch and Schorsch Kamerun. His work was recognized early on with awards, including the 1st prize of the Artward München (2017) and the Art Prize of the Kunstverein Rosenheim (2022).

Stähle's painting operates in the tension between gesture, narration, and ironic disruption. Titles and series of works – often literary or pop culturally charged – open up associative spaces without reducing painting to mere illustration. Color appears as an independent actor: sometimes applied flat, sometimes layered transparently, always in precise relation to the picture plane. His works reflect art historical references as well as contemporary visual cultures, combining formal rigor with playful openness.

Solo exhibitions have taken him to, among others, the Galerie Artoxin (2021), the Kunstverein München (2019), and the Sommergalerie Zöbing (2017). Furthermore, he has been represented in numerous group and curated exhibitions, including at the Grafikmuseum Stiftung Schreiner, the Kunstverein Rosenheim, and KNUST+KUNZ Munich. His works are created and live in Munich.

Philipp Stähle

Q&A with the artists:

The exhibition ARTIFICIAL? Traces of the Present brings together works that question our perception. Reality appears not as a given, but as something that is constantly being appropriated. ARTIFICIAL? questions whether what we see and experience is not always already made, constructed, and mediated.

Brief statement on the work of Philipp Stähle:

The compositions in Philipp Stähle’s paintings combine classical features of atmospheric landscape painting with abstracted foreground motifs. Backgrounds interpenetrate, and illusionistic depth is counteracted by the flatness of the shadowy forms. These forms and their constellations create a coordinate system in Stähle’s works. Impressions of beer crates and chessboards embody for the artist a constructed living space where every solution is the origin of new problems. On the matrix of the chessboard, the ambivalence of cultivation becomes clear: it is a game of aristocratic origin, accessible to all social classes, that follows unquestionable rules and yet is a field for experimenting with infinite combinations. Mountain landscapes play an important role for the artist. The curve diagram of the mountain silhouette is an ambiguous metaphor for fluctuations, not least between the emotional and the rational.