PLUSH APOCALYPSE

PLUSH APOCALYPSE

Solo Exhibition: Peter Kohl

Exhibition Dates: June 6, 2026 – June 14, 2026

Peter Kohl’s painting practice navigates the tension between narrative figuration, surreal exaggeration, and a deliberately infantilized visual language. His works do not construct linear narratives, but rather fragmented pictorial spaces in which figures, animals, and hybrid bodies appear in unstable constellations often organized according to dream logic.

Characteristic of this is the tension between formal “softness”—in the sense of organically rounded, almost plush-like body forms—and a densification of content that frequently veers into the grotesque. This ambivalence generates a visual logic in which the supposedly cute does not function as a safe space, but rather as an aesthetic surface that makes irritation and ambivalence visible in the first place.

Kohl’s iconographic vocabulary operates with motifs from the animal world, body fragments, and archetypal figures that move between roles such as observer, fool, or ruler. Works such as The Plush Observer or the figure of the “Naked Pig King” point to a closed yet unstable narrative universe in which hierarchies of human and animal, subject and object, control and vulnerability are constantly shifting.

The exhibition PLUSH APOCALYPSE focuses precisely on this tipping point: the moment when the aesthetics of the soft and playful are transformed into a post-humorous, slightly apocalyptic visual order. The works should therefore be read less as illustrative scenes and more as visual systems that question the very conditions of meaning, emotion, and narrative identity.

Opening Reception & Brunch: Saturday, June 6, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.h

On Saturday, June 6, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Galerie HMH invites you to an opening reception followed by a brunch in honor of Peter Kohl’s exhibition. The event takes place at Galerie HMH I in cooperation with the Streicher Gallery, which will reopen in 2025, and brings together two curatorial perspectives within a dynamically evolving gallery ensemble