Maximilian Prüfer Maximilian Prüfer

OPENING
Thursday, 15.01.2026, 6.30 pm

WELCOME
Sebastian Haselsteiner, Head of STRABAG ART

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Angela Stief, Director Albertina modern; Jury member STRABAG ART Award

If one seeks a tradition into which Max Prüfer might be placed, the path inevitably leads to Leonardo da Vinci—to that rare type in whom art and science mirror one another. Prüfer (*1986 in Weilheim, Bavaria) belongs to these border crossers. His works emerge where control and chance touch, where a universal order arises from what appears chaotic.

Prüfer makes the invisible visible. Around fifteen years ago, he developed his own artistic method, which he calls 'Naturantypie': a printing or imprinting process through which he captures biological sequences and natural processes on paper.

For his solo exhibition A Picture Finds Grace (Ein Bild findet Gnade), Prüfer works with flies. For him, they are a symbol of transition—between life and death, decay and creation. In nature, they signify what perishes while at the same time beginning anew. This idea runs through the entire body of Prüfers work: from the extraction of pigments to the formation of the image and even the framing.

Prüfer’s current works are based on historical research and take as their point of departure a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels: 'No picture finds grace.' The phrase referred to works of so-called 'Degenerate Art'—paintings, drawings, and sculptures that were removed from museums, defamed, sold, or destroyed.

A Picture Finds Grace (Ein Bild findet Gnade) is not an attempt to heal history. It is a making visible of that which was meant to be erased.
Angela Stief

>Maximilian Prüfer
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Photo: Maximilian Prüfer