Ingrid Pfeiffer:
To Paint What Hurts

Armin Boehm, PARIS SANS FIN, 2026

Nevertheless, Boehm says, “I never really wanted to paint political images.” Among other pursuits, he studied under Jörg Immendorff, but at the time he could do little with his direct and explicitly political painting. Immendorff, according to Boehm, painted out of anger, after reading the newspaper, with the clear goal of using art to change “life” and the world. From today’s perspective, it is an idealism that, in the face of overwhelm by AI, media, and daily horror news, seems almost romantic.

As with all reflective artists of the past, Boehm is also aware that his art essentially stands on the shoulders of many other significant predecessors, whose visual worlds, interpretations, and inventions continue to shape us: “One enters a very old room of images through painting,” he says. And so, the artist finds his sources and inspirations not only in comics and the ever-present Internet, in all imaginable corners of our contemporary world, but also in art history. He references, among others, the wild masks of James Ensor, as well as the cool and pessimistic portraits and still lifes of the New Objectivity movement. His distorted and mutilated faces bring to mind the war veterans depicted by Otto Dix and George Grosz after the First World War. “Brutality! Clarity that hurts… Wield that brush with all you’ve got—capture the raging time,” Grosz wrote in 1922. The same underlying feeling seems to permeate Boehm’s painting.

Looking at his large-format compositions, the various scenes are by no means placed next to one other without connection; rather, they are skillfully interwoven. Often there is dark, shadowy architecture quoting places significant to Boehm, such as from his childhood or memorial sites—but these rarely take center stage. The center of the image is usually dominated by brightly glowing hybrid creatures that communicate with one other in a mysterious way—aliens and dark dreamlike fantasies combined. But often, one cannot take them entirely seriously; the artist stages them in a playful and ironic manner, and it is precisely the “evil” ones that are painted in a particularly captivating manner.

His theatrical staging—often with a brightly lit central scene, windows, and curtains—reveals thoughtful dramaturgy and control of the viewer’s gaze. Sometimes the artist includes himself in the picture as well, standing at the front or at the edge as an animal tamer in the arena of his own invented monsters. Sometimes he looks directly at us from the picture, fixing our gaze, as if he wants to ask directly: “Do you understand what I am showing you here?” This practice of placing of oneself in the picture has been a popular artistic device since the Middle Ages.

Armin Boehm, FÜCHSE TRÄUMEN UND KATZEN FLIEGEN, 2026

A distinctive feature is Boehm’s collage technique, as he works with fabrics that he collects and places at central points within the paintings: with them, he highlights thick orange or pink lips or other prominent body parts. The effect is significant, as the woven silk or linen fabrics add structure and texture to the image and a luminosity that painted tones could never achieve. Boehm’s “toxic” color palette of mixed hues also significantly contributes to the dissonant underlying mood of his works. Without these bright and clashing “skewed” shades, the overall psychological effect would be much less. The artist acts like a director of emotions, as his works take us viewers on a rollercoaster ride of repulsion and attraction, of fascination and a search for meaning. The paintings contain so many layers of content and painting technique that our attention is constantly captivated.

The painter seems to be an idealist after all, fluctuating between accusation, melancholy, and cautious optimism. For on a closer look, his works even contain comforting scenes—animals such as cats, dogs, or owls—inhabiting small paradises in the corners. Surprisingly, this is reminiscent of Marc Chagall, who also composed many fantastic scenes and narratives side by side in his paintings. For him, too, the animals symbolically represent healing and the remaining paradise in a world so greatly disturbed by humans.
With his wild and swirling compositions, Armin Boehm has long been an important observer, chronicler, and idiosyncratic interpreter of the present. He paints what hurts, but with so many layers that one can sensually as well as intellectually “enjoy” such pictures. In this way, he avoids many of the pitfalls of overly direct political art, because what we see above all is: painting.