Julian Irlinger’s practice questions the mechanisms of memory and the transmission of history. Drawing on archives, found material, and historical aesthetics, his body of work—spanning drawing, film, photography, and sculpture—challenges dominant historical narratives and their cultural representations, as well as the ideological currents that shape them.

In his lecture, he will discuss works from recent years and his exhibition The Curtain of Time, currently on view at Portikus. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a self-painted animation, designed in the historical mid-century modern style, which references the architecture of historical reconstruction—a phenomenon in recent architectural history dedicated to rebuilding destroyed structures. The talk explores the significance of both the animation technique and the architecture of critical reconstruction, each of which, in its own way, brings the lifeless (back) into the present.

Julian Irlinger (*1986, Erlangen) lives and works in Berlin. He graduated in 2017 from the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Previously, from 2011 to 2014, he studied Fine Art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and received his BA in Art History in 2011 from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 2018, he was one of the participants of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. In 2022, he was a participant of the BPA// Berlin program for artists.

Irlinger has had institutional solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2025); Kunstverein für Mecklenburg und Vorpommern, Schwerin (2025); the Wende Museum, Los Angeles (2022); Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2020); Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (2019); and Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2017). His work has also been included in exhibitions at Hamburger Kunstverein (2023), Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2022); Dortmunder Kunstverein (2022); Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2018); Artists Space, New York (2018); and Kunsthalle Wien (2016).