Christopher Lehmpfuhl – Nachbarschaften Berlin: Guardini Galerie
The exhibition Nachbarschaften Berlin, organised by KORNFELD Galerie in cooperation with the Guardini Stiftung, brings together new paintings by Christopher Lehmpfuhl that share one thing in common: they were all created in Berlin, painted en plein air in front of the respective motif.
Discovering the familiar and the unknown in equal measure, Christopher Lehmpfuhl roamed through his hometown, which has provided him with an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration since the beginning of his artistic career.
Early on, he decided to capture the visible world in representational images. He does not do this in the comfortable warmth of a studio, but works outdoors, painting on site in wind, sun, rain, heat, or cold. As a student at the HDK Berlin (today the University of the Arts, UdK) under Professor Klaus Fußmann—whose master student he later became—Lehmpfuhl cycled through the city with a wooden box attached to his bicycle, filled with small scraps of canvas, brushes, and oil paints. Whenever something caught his eye as worthy of painting, he stopped, unpacked his materials, and captured what he saw. In this way, he conquered his city through painting.
His works were soon met with success. The bicycle became a van, the small canvas scraps grew into ever larger formats. The painter in Berlin became the painter from Berlin, who travelled widely as a roaming artist—painting in northern and southern Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Lapland and Iceland, Georgia, China, Australia, and the USA.
Despite his extensive travels, Lehmpfuhl has remained deeply connected to Berlin. The city is his base: he lives and works here, continues to discover new corners he has never painted before, and reveals new facets of places he has depicted many times.
Today, Lehmpfuhl no longer applies oil paint with brushes, but with his bare hands. He has developed an unmistakable style—just as he humorously predicted in a 1998 article for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, when he remarked: “One day, you should be able to recognise a Lehmpfuhl from a hundred metres away.”
His distinctive oil paintings remain the foundation of his practice, complemented by a wide range of techniques that reflect his ongoing curiosity. Over the years, he has created etchings, monotypes, glass works, and sculptures, and in recent years has once again been working regularly with watercolours.
The exhibition at the Guardini Galerie at Anhalter Bahnhof focuses on oil paintings and watercolours that depict what caught Lehmpfuhl’s attention while painting and sketching throughout Berlin: buildings, streets, parks, and lakes. Through a diverse array of large and small individual works, diptychs, and even a triptych, the exhibition unfolds a multifaceted panorama of the city of Berlin.
Christopher Lehmpfuhl (born 1972 in Berlin) was a master student of Klaus Fußmann at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. He has received numerous awards, including a scholarship from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the GASAG Art Prize Berlin. His works have been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries, including the Würth Museum in Künzelsau and La Rioja (Spain), the Rosenhang Museum in Weilburg, and the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig.
