Yet Untitled II
For the second part of his catalogue release, Julius Bobke takes over Kunsthalle Ost in Leipzig. With Yet Untitled II, he once again turns to his boxing gym – a place of physical confrontation, discipline, and social dynamics that is both a constant part of his daily life and central to his artistic practice. By transposing this training space into the white cube, two systems intersect, each defined by its own rules, rituals, and aesthetics. Their overlap reveals how seemingly opposing spaces resemble each other as arenas in which bodies and images are shaped, tested, and transformed.
The exhibition follows Protect yourself at all times, a group exhibition Bobke organized together with Inga Krumme in his Berlin boxing gym in 2024. There, the gym itself became an exhibition architecture, presenting works under the conditions of sparring, training, and competition. In Leipzig, Bobke now reverses this gesture: it is not art that enters the gym, but the gym that enters the Kunsthalle. In doing so, he shifts the perspective onto a place that drives and sustains his practice – bringing an atmosphere of concentration, intensity, and vulnerability into the exhibition space that would otherwise remain behind the scenes.
His paintings condense these tensions into independent visual worlds that emerge through layering, overpainting, sewing, and kneading. Personal experiences – at times intimate, playful, or painful – intertwine with art-historical motifs and fragments of popular culture. The tragic meets the comic, the heroic meets the vulnerable. Out of this, Bobke develops a visual language that places ambiguity, humor, and resilience at its core.
The catalogue presented in the exhibition – produced in close collaboration with his gallery Nina Mielcarczyk – reflects this approach as well. It brings together notes on image ideas, sparring selfies, materials, and exhibition views. The deliberate blending of these forms, combined with Bobke’s incisive humor, allows both the works and their documentation to arrive at a personal and unmistakable language. With Yet Untitled II, this logic is transferred into the exhibition space itself and becomes directly tangible for visitors.