Ingo Kühl

In 2019 he took part in the project "Tisch am Kliff" (Table on the Cliff): Two bronze plates each on the theme of 5000 years of Sylt history designed and assembled into a table plate by five artists, set up on the Wadden Sea in the immediate vicinity of the Sylt Museum in Keitum.

Travels followed to Chile, where he painted the Picture cycle "Landscapes of the End of the World" (2005) in Tierra del Fuego and circumnavigated Cape Horn on board of a sailing yacht (2009). In Papua New Guinea he worked together with the indigenous sculptor Tomulopa Deko. The two explored the Sepik area (2010). In 2012 he returned to Papua New Guinea with his wife and both traveled in company with Tomulopa Deko to the Sepik River again. Afterwards they visited the Trobriand Islands, where Ingo Kühl studied the Kula culture.

In 1999 he visited the Lofoten, set up a provisional studio in Reine in a rorbu and painted the view over the harbor to the mountain range. In 2000 he made a trip around the world: Thailand, Laos, New Zealand, South Pacific, Peru. In 2001 he married Annette Kühl and they both spent a year in the South Seas: Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Fiji, Vanuatu. He painted South Sea pictures. After participating in an expedition of the Cultural Center to ceremonies of the indigenous people in Lamap on Malakula, his works that were created there were shown in an exhibition at the National Museum of Vanuatu.

Since 1986 he has been making sculptures in clay and plaster based on his drawings on the subject of architecture fantasies, one of them was cast in bronze in the art foundry Hermann Noack in 1988. It served as a model for an accessible, unfinished and temporary architectural sculpture The Eighth Day on the Obermarkt in Görlitz (1996) as well as for several casts in plaster, acrystal and zellan. Furthermore, he created eight colored reliefs of clay on the subject of Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount for the senior citizens' home next to the Christ Church in Görlitz (1997) and the five-part series West Coast, inspired by the West Coast of New Zealand. In 2008 three Architectural Sculptures entitled Raum – die ganze Stadt (Space – The Whole City) were cast in bronze. An enlarged version of the Architecture Sculpture of 1988 was produced in 2009 (on a scale of 5: 1) and shown in the exhibition Art on the Beach in Rantum on Sylt. In 2010 in Keitum on Sylt he created together with Tomulopa Deko from Papua New Guinea two carved and colored sculptures Wedding Chairs in the form of Kundu drums. In 2019 the bronze relief Boat in a moving sea was created.

In his early work, echoes of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Action painting and Tachism can be recognized. From 1983 he dealt with Landscape painting and after a phase of almost monochrome non-representational pictures that are reminiscent of the work of Gotthard Graubner, he turned back to paintings based on natural phenomena. The series of pictures Färöer (Faroe Islands) (1995) and Winterreise (based on Franz Schubert) (1995/96) were created. In 1998 he painted four large-format oil paintings on the subject of Vier Jahreszeiten (Four Seasons) for the Johanniter Hospital in Fläming in Treuenbrietzen. These were followed by picture cycles such as Landschaften am Ende der Welt (2005) and Das Haus am Watt (House on the Mudflats)(2015).

Grown up in Bovenau near Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein as a son of a policeman, Ingo Kühl attended the Theodor-Storm-Realschule in Hanerau-Hademarschen. After a traineeship as a carpenter and a drafter he studied Architecture at the Kiel University of Applied Sciences. From 1977 to 1982, he studied Architecture and Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. At that time Surrealism influenced his drawings dealing with Architectural Fantasies. Motivated by an encounter with the painter Heinz Trökes in 1979, he turned towards painting. He traveled throughout Europe using his first sketchbooks. In 1977 a trip to Israel, Sinai Peninsula, followed. In 1978 he participated in an excursion to Teheran led by Prof. Rainer Ernst, with a sojourn in Isfahan. Additional to his Berlin artist's studio he ran a studio on the North Sea peninsula Eiderstedt (from 1980 to 1994), followed by studios on the North Sea islands Amrum an Nordstrand. Since 2002 Sylt has been his preferred domicile. In 1982 he had a studio in Brooklyn, New York. In 1984 he became a Member of the Chamber of Architects Berlin as a "self-employed architect" and tried to build one of Hermann Finsterlin's Architecture Visions. In 1987 he resigned from the Chamber of Architects to devote himself entirely to painting. In 1988 he published the book "Luft und Wasser – Gedichte und Bilder" together with Sarah Kirsch in the Steidl Verlag. The first bronze casting of an Architectural Sculpture was realized.

Ingo Kühl (born 29 June 1953) is a German painter, sculptor and architect.