Exhibition text by Maria Pia Napolitano de Majo
EGO-DEATH—posthedonicnihilism is both the culmination and the overturning of the themes and forms that artist Maximilian Gutmair has explored over the past decade.
Installed in the basement of Munich’s AdBK — karmatically placed in the very room dedicated to the Academy’s ceramics workshop — EGO-DEATH becomes a space of suspension, yet also one of overflowing life.
A planimetry of architectures hovers just above a thin layer of fog and plastic film: temple-like ceramic sculptures and fountains, overtaken by a hypertrophic nature. The room is transformed into a contradictory sensorial environment, where the volume of water-pumping constructions coexists with weightless fog and Giovanni Raabe’s soundscape, composed from field recordings of the installation’s own materials.
Gutmair’s background as a florist — and their family’s connection to greenhouses in the countryside of Baden Württemberg — grounds the artist’s subconscious tie to emotional landscapes of architectures that are connected to the flora. If fountains are typically socialized as urban commons, here they become sites of Nature’s reclaiming: spikes and lumps, reminiscent of carnivorous plants, emerge — at times opening into toothed mouths.
Water flows through a post-apocalyptic environment, where the hybris of humankind was overthrown, and life is once again free to flourish in calm resilience. The stillness and cyclical flow within the room counteract the rushing linearity of the neoliberal ideal. Thus, the posthumous flair is tied to a primitive understanding of Life, with the emergence of shapes that resemble corals and the chimney-like mineral structures on the seafloor that could have helped create the RNA molecules that gave rise to life on Earth and hold promise to the emergence of life on distant planets.
Queerness manifests as a form of cross-pollination: a porous exchange between organic excess and constructed form, between cultivation and what escapes control. It departs from the nihilistic stance of “we might as well enjoy” — a posture of resignation or hedonistic escape — and gestures instead toward a more expansive, generative mode of being: one that understands Love not as fleeting pleasure or sentiment, but as a vital, sustaining force — a mode of relation that affirms life itself. In this light, cross-pollinating queerness becomes an invitation to reimagine relationality, care, and futurity — through the lens of interconnection and transformative affection.
Easy read text
Ego death is the experience of temporarily losing your usual sense of self or identity. It's when the boundaries between “you” and the world dissolve. Hedonic nihilism is the belief that life has no deeper meaning, so we might as well enjoy pleasure while we can.
Jahresausstellung 2025 (AdBK Munich) by Maximilian Gutmair
The exhibition EGO-DEATH — posthedonicnihilism shows important themes that the artist Maximilian Gutmair has explored for many years. The artwork is shown in the basement of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. It is in the same room where ceramics are made. This makes the place special for the exhibition of Gutmair’s ceramic sculptures.
The space feels quiet but also full of life. You see ceramic sculptures and fountains that look like temples. Fog and plastic film cover the floor. A ceramic nature grows wildly over everything.
You hear sounds sampled from the materials in the room. These sounds were produced by Giovanni Raabe.
Maximilian Gutmair used to work as a florist. His family has greenhouses in the Baden Württemberg countryside. Plant shapes with spikes and teeth appear in his work — like carnivorous plants. Fountains, usually found in cities, feel very different here. Water flows through a world after the end of humankind. Nature comes back and grows strong again.
Some shapes look like corals or very chimney-like mineral structures. It feels as if time is turning backward, or forward, to show the beginning of life.
The exhibition defines queerness as cross-pollination. Queerness as cross-pollination expresses a fluid and generative way of being that resists fixed categories. Borrowing from nature, it evokes the idea of identities, bodies, and forms mixing and transforming through mutual influence. Rather than emphasizing control or definition, it affirms connection, hybridity, and openness. In this sense, queerness becomes not just an identity, but a relational force—creative, evolving, and deeply rooted in care and interdependence.
Thank you to the supporting forces who contributed to the implementation and realization of this work. Edith Plattner, the workshop manager. Armin Linke, the class supervisor, assisted by Lea Vajda. Viola “V” Glink, Mara Yakuba, Amrei von Hofacker, Ramona Rauch, and trace_patch.
Instagram of Maximilian Gutmair
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