Layered secrets
Christoph Luger
Irene Wölfl
on view: 17/11/2025 - 28/01/2026
“Layered secrets” brings together two artistic approaches that explore the hidden, the fragile, and the layered in very different ways. Christoph Luger and Irene Wölfl work with traces, fragments, and textures—whether on walls or within materials, through painting or found objects. Their works don’t tell overt stories; instead, they leave space for meaning to slowly emerge. These are quiet works that linger—precisely because they don’t reveal everything at once.
Christoph Luger invites us to look beneath the surface—to explore a world that is ambiguous, fragile, and layered with meaning. He doesn't offer a full picture, but rather composes fragments that hint at a larger whole. His process begins by applying paper directly to the wall, fusing the materials so the surface becomes both support and subject. What interests him isn’t a smooth, uniform finish, but rather a painterly texture full of gesture, transparency, and irregularities—surfaces that seem worn, weathered, and quietly expressive.
Using only translucent glue-bound paints, he layers colour over cracks and ruptures in the paper with broad, gestural strokes. Scratches and imperfections are carefully patched with torn paper in muted, delicate tones. His approach is intuitive, and the work emerges through—and because of—traces of damage. Detached from the structure of the wall, the resulting images evoke a sense of lightness and freedom. Each piece is a quiet, tactile meditation on what lies beneath.
Irene Wölfl gives new life to what others have left behind. With empathy for the discarded and the forgotten, she creates works that connect past and present in subtle, poetic ways. Old photographs, handwritten notes, wallpaper scraps, postcards—what may seem insignificant becomes, in her hands, material for something timeless. Her process is as much about storytelling as it is about form: each object carries memory, loss, love, or longing. Each one holds a secret layer.
Wölfl’s work is driven by her fascination with reuse—and a quiet critique of the throwaway culture we live in. She believes that things can have more than one life, and that even in fragments, we find beauty and meaning. Her pieces don’t reveal full stories, but offer glimpses—hints of lives once lived. They speak softly, inviting viewers to imagine their own narratives, to travel inward, and to reflect on what remains. Her art is a space where old things find new purpose—and where the layers of time gently unfold.
Christoph Luger invites us to look beneath the surface—to explore a world that is ambiguous, fragile, and layered with meaning. He doesn't offer a full picture, but rather composes fragments that hint at a larger whole. His process begins by applying paper directly to the wall, fusing the materials so the surface becomes both support and subject. What interests him isn’t a smooth, uniform finish, but rather a painterly texture full of gesture, transparency, and irregularities—surfaces that seem worn, weathered, and quietly expressive.
Using only translucent glue-bound paints, he layers colour over cracks and ruptures in the paper with broad, gestural strokes. Scratches and imperfections are carefully patched with torn paper in muted, delicate tones. His approach is intuitive, and the work emerges through—and because of—traces of damage. Detached from the structure of the wall, the resulting images evoke a sense of lightness and freedom. Each piece is a quiet, tactile meditation on what lies beneath.
Irene Wölfl gives new life to what others have left behind. With empathy for the discarded and the forgotten, she creates works that connect past and present in subtle, poetic ways. Old photographs, handwritten notes, wallpaper scraps, postcards—what may seem insignificant becomes, in her hands, material for something timeless. Her process is as much about storytelling as it is about form: each object carries memory, loss, love, or longing. Each one holds a secret layer.
Wölfl’s work is driven by her fascination with reuse—and a quiet critique of the throwaway culture we live in. She believes that things can have more than one life, and that even in fragments, we find beauty and meaning. Her pieces don’t reveal full stories, but offer glimpses—hints of lives once lived. They speak softly, inviting viewers to imagine their own narratives, to travel inward, and to reflect on what remains. Her art is a space where old things find new purpose—and where the layers of time gently unfold.