Traces in a Sandbox: Kunstverein Ulm

Kutlesa is pleased to announce Traces in a Sandbox, a duo exhibition by Wolfgang Guenther & Julius Bobke, opening at the institutional art space Kunstverein Ulm on September 12, 2026. The human body is a living archive—a vessel encoding time, raw experience, external impacts, and shifting internal worlds, constantly morphing yet remaining recognizably itself. But in the art of Wolfgang Guenther, this comfortable certainty shatters.

Emerging from portraits of himself and those in his closest orbit, Guenther’s figures rapidly break free from their real-world inspirations. They lie, stand, hover, or plunge through the image space, sprawling across multiple canvases in a breathtaking state of limbo. Their contours are there, yet completely porous; bodies burst open, exposing hidden internal architectures or dissolving entirely into their surroundings.

Through this dynamic tension, Guenther tackles an deceptively simple yet haunting question: What truly makes a body human?

His figures become provisional, fluid forms—canvas playgrounds for dissecting physical presence alongside psychological turmoil, external forces, and perceptions of the self. Traces of paint slice through these figures, rendering them translucent, fragmented, and perpetually shifting the boundary between raw figuration and pure abstraction. Yet precisely where a figure threatens to vanish altogether, a thrilling truth emerges: just how extraordinarily little it takes for a form to still be felt, seen, and read as a human body.