Artist Statement — Ari Pilhofer

Artist Statement

Ari Pilhofer (b. 1993, Amberg, Bavaria) is a London-based interdisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, performance, sound, ceramics, digital modelling and text.
Their practice expands painting into a porous system that seeps into sculptures, gestures, installations, sound, and performance.

Pilhofer’s work explores how identity and aesthetic judgment are socially and class-culturally constructed.
Drawing from queer theory, Bavarian folklore, German subcultures and personal mythology, they create fragmentary forms that reject resolution.
A recurring figure called the Spider-Knight functions as a gender-resisting archetype, appearing in performance, sculpture, and image as a shifting vessel of protection and refusal.

Their processes combine analogue and digital tools: painted surfaces are scanned, distorted, and re-materialised as ceramics, sculptural objects or garments. Through this, Pilhofer activates a form of techno-magic, transforming symbols into textures, images into bodies, and digital ghosts into tangible artefacts.

Softness, repetition, and craft techniques—such as stitching, pouring, and layering—are used not for aesthetic decoration but as political gestures. Their work also reclaims occult, intuitive and so-called “irrational” knowledges (divination, mysticism, textile language) as serious modes of embodied research and resistance.

Pilhofer’s practice has been presented at Galvani Galerie (Nuremberg), Kurt-Kurt (Berlin), Bayerisches Staatsministerium (Munich), Warehouse X1 (Boston, Massachusetts), and in collaborative performances with artist Simone Körner in Nuremberg and Chicago, Illinois.
They have taught workshops at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg and HFBK Hamburg, collaborating with artist Andrea Huyoff. They are currently completing an MA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, supported by a DAAD scholarship from 2024 to 2026.

CV

Education

2024-2026 MA Painting at Slade School of Fine Arts, London
2024 Qualification; examination of State in art pedagogy at Academy of Fine Arts Nürnberg
2021 Title of Master student from Prof. Kerstin Brätsch
2018 - 2024 Study of Fine Art Education at the AdBK Nuremberg

Additional experience

2023 creation and realisation of the workshop Nasty Full Figure
with artist Eva Nüsslein at Kunstpalais Erlangen
during fables of abstraction and fungi by Ad Minoliti
2023 creation and realisation of the workshop Arkanas bauen
with artist Andrea Huyoff, realising it at international summer academy Salzburg,
Ludwig-Forum Aachen and HFBK Hamburg
2023 release of the album Siffe by Post-Punk-Band Fuß
2023 Founding member of the queer-feminist collective Wildpinkler*innen
2021 Member of the interdisciplinary collective Phantom Step
2019 Founding member of the Post-Punk-Band Fuß
2018 teaching with the sound collective DAF (dynamic acoustic research)
Artissima experimental Academy during Artissima Art Fair, Turin

Scholarships and Prizes

2024-2026 DAAD scholarship funding an MA in Fine Arts
2023 Academy Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg for the installation asphalt lecken
2022 appearance in the LfA art calendar of the Landesförderbank Bayern
2020 Scholarship from the Free State of Bavaria for the
International Summer Academy Salzburg

Exhibitions/excerpts

Solo-Shows

2023 CHOOSE, CHOOSE CHOOSE ( )our,
Galvani Galerie, Nürnberg
2018 Guadeloupe Reliquie,
at Casablanca Filmkunsttheater, Nürnberg

Group-Shows

2025 I am the beast I worship, Hackney Bath, London
2024 Slade 1st Year Painting, Split Gallery, London
2024 Öl auf Schritt, with Simone Körner, Prarie Material, Chicago Illinois
2023 asphalt lecken, AdBK Nürnberg
2023 Öl auf Schritt, with Simone Körner, Performance,
Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Bundesagentur für Arbeit,
Raststätte Frankenwald, Milchhof, Nürnberg
2022 literal bodies, Künstlerhaus, Nürnberg
2021 Phantom Step, Kurt-Kurt, Berlin
2021 Kunst im Ministergang, Bayerisches Staatsministerium for Science and Fine Art
2021 Ustopia 1, Kulturwerkstatt auf AEG, Nürnberg
2020 Heavy Heart of Gold, Galerie ortart, Nürnberg

2019 The Rock, Underwater-exhibition,
Westbruch Brandis, Leipzig
2018 Dissolve Music Festival,
Warehouse X1 of MIT, Boston Massachusetts
2018 Artissima experimental Academy
Artissima Art Fair, Turin

Concerts

2019-2023 concerts with Fuß in various venues
in Nürnberg, Mannheim and Berlin