FS.ART - Frank Ahlgrimm: You get what you see

FS.ART Bodensee

Frank Ahlgrimm: You get what you see

October 18 – December 20, 2025 and January 12 – January 24, 2026
Thursdays from 4:00 to 7:00 pm and Saturdays from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm
or by appointment on +49-7543-9530388 or kontakt@fs-art.de

The solo exhibition of Frank Ahlgrimm at the FS.ART Showroom Bodensee takes its starting point from a key work by the artist dating from 2001.
The multi-part painting entitled Pokerface is nearly ten meters wide and was created at the conclusion of his studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. It marks a decisive moment in Ahlgrimm’s artistic development. Already in this monumental work, a pictorial language unfolded that has since formed the foundation of his oeuvre.

“Pokerface fascinated me from the very beginning – it is a work that has never left my mind over all these years,” says Florian Schmid. “Probably also because Ahlgrimm’s later works build precisely on these early ideas and have continued to develop them consistently and in manifold ways up to the present.”

Ahlgrimm’s paintings and drawings have their roots in the painting of the 1980s, yet they add an aspect that actually derives from the music of the late 1990s. In the spirit of a “remix” approach, existing material is taken up, recomposed, and brought into fresh constellations. The artist draws on both his own painterly achievements and the inventions of other significant painters of his time. In this way, a visual world emerges that reveals familiar elements, yet shifts, overlays, and reinterprets them in surprising ways. Ahlgrimm has thus developed a methodology that enables him to continually evolve both technically and painterly, while at the same time remaining true to his fundamental idea of painting. Within his broadly conceived creative process, he constantly alternates between the accumulation and masterful interweaving of diverse painterly elements, and a complete focus on just one of these components, which he selects from the toolkit of his pictorial repertoire.

His painting is therefore at once analytical and playful – reflecting on the medium itself while generating something radically unique, capable of withstanding the overwhelming flood of everyday images.

The exhibition in Tettnang makes this development visible. Selected works from the past 25 years are shown, tracing the thread from Pokerface to the present. The show thus offers not only a concentrated overview of Ahlgrimm’s artistic position, but also a rare insight into the long-term unfolding and continual reorientation of an artistic concept.

Frank Ahlgrimm (*1965 in Rerik on the Baltic Sea) lives and works in Berlin. His works are represented in renowned public and private collections. Most recently, Ahlgrimm was featured with several works in the anniversary exhibition Doppelkäseplatte. 100 Years of the Collection. 20 Years Kunstmuseum Stuttgart at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.