FOLLINES AND FICTIONS
at Galerie im Schlosspavillon
Munchen, Germany
Exhibition text
Schloss pavilion — once a place of aristocratic leisure and imagination, now inhabited by artificial animals, sculptures, and paintings by four Munich-based artists. This time, the pavilion, located in the park of Ismaning, reveals its playful and fictional side — echoing the very idea of a folly: an architectural structure built not for practical function, but for the evocation of emotion, provocation, and a touch of absurdity. Surrounded by trees and birds outside, the gallery becomes an imagined reflection of the park itself — and an alternative history of its building. The works fill the space with speculative life: uncanny animal sculptures, playful paintings, and mosaics that blur the boundary between natural and artificial, past and present.
Through this constructed menagerie, Follies and Fictions explores the human impulse to imitate, frame, and escape nature — an impulse historically cultivated within aristocratic garden culture itself. The exhibition draws on the concepts of play, différance, and constructed meaning developed by Jacques Derrida to reimagine the pavilion not merely as a site, but as a symbolic system — a performative structure where meaning constantly shifts, and every element acts as both symbol and decoy. Just as aristocratic follies once staged illusions of nature and power, this exhibition turns fiction into a method of inquiry.
The architectural concept of the folly lies at the heart of the exhibition — and at the heart of the pavilion itself. Built around 1730 for Johann Theodor of Bavaria, the Schlosspavillon Ismaning was never meant for practical use. Originally conceived as a garden teahouse and later repurposed as a billiard salon, it exemplifies a tradition of ornamental structures designed for leisure, fantasy, and visual delight — a space to step away from function, and into fiction.
Group exhibition
18 July – 14 September 2025
Lisa Bahuschewskaja
Sevilay Hannas
Julija Kalinova
Evgenia Shepeleva
Exhibition viewJulija Kalinova, On a walk, 2025, Öl auf HolzExhibition view
Exhibition viewJulija Kalinova, Window, 2025, Öl auf HDF-PlatteJulija Kalinova, Lumine, 2025, Öl auf LeinwandExhibition viewJulija Kalinova, Trophäen, 2025, TextilJulija Kalinova, Trophäen, 2025, TextilEvgenia Shepeleva, Spiegelbild III, 2025, Öl auf Leinwand
Curated by Egor Miroshnichenko Text by Egor Miroshnichenko
Photo by Vladyslav Prydatko