In his artistic practice, Julian Irlinger uses a variety of media—including sculpture, photography, drawing, and animation—to explore the interrelationships between art and cultural macronarratives, as well as their connection to the present and the future. For his solo exhibition Verirrte Zeiger at the Kunstverein für Mecklenburg und Vorpommern in Schwerin, Irlinger engages with the history and technique of hand-drawn cel animation and reflects on the mediation of dominant historical narratives in pop cultural entertainment in relation to the Kunstverein’s spaces.
For this, Julian Irlinger draws on the technique of cel animation, which was prevalent in the 20th century and named after the transparent foils (cels) on which cartoon characters were animated. This animation technique, used by major studios such as Warner Bros. and Walt Disney, was based on the principles of economic management and broke down the work process into numerous steps. This streamlining made animation suitable for mass production. This now almost extinct practice of analog animation consists of up to 24 hand-drawn frames per second.
Irlinger adapts this relationship between art, fantasy, and labor in his hand-drawn, coloured and animated film Ludwig (Verirrte Zeiger), 2025, to connect the tragic fate of Ludwig II with pop culture and a historical narrative in the guise of nostalgic cel animation. The King of Bavaria, known as the „Fairytale King“ who was an avid supporter of fine arts, died under mysterious circumstances in Lake Starnberg after being declared incapacitated. His most significant architectural legacy, Neuschwanstein Castle, remains not only a tourist attraction but also a national symbol of representation. The Bavarian castle also served as a direct inspiration for the “Sleeping Beauty” castle in Disneyland—later stylised in the logo of the major American media company.
Ludwig II and Walt Disney shared a fascination with Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Both pursued the goal of creating immersive, illusionary worlds through synaesthetic productions that deliberately distanced themselves from historical and real-life circumstances and abolished the traditional separation between audience and spectacle. To realise this vision, both relied on the latest technological innovations. For example, Ludwig II commissioned elaborate sets and advanced lighting technology for his artificial Venus Grotto in Linderhof Palace. As early as 1878, he commissioned the construction of the first permanently operated electrical power station, for which he commissioned AEG to invent indigo-blue lighting. This blue was intended to be modelled on the Blue Grotto on Capri, but was only technologically realised posthumously. Disney, in turn, took a pioneering role in the film and animation industry—be it in the synchronisation of sound and image, the development of innovative copyright strategies, or the Taylorist organisation of creative work—and ultimately realised his own utopian world of experience with Disneyland.
In the context of this tension between illusion, animation, history, and entertainment, Julian Irlinger uses multiple projections to position his animated film, specially modified for the exhibition, in relation to the architectural structure of the Kunstverein. This reveals parallels between the filmic work and the local conditions of the residential city. While Schwerin Castle was considered a unique pinnacle of Romantic historicism until the construction of Neuschwanstein Castle, the Kunstverein is located in a listed former power station, whose typology is based on a castle and which served as the first municipal power supply until 1969. Ludwig’s pioneering role in the development of power stations, as well as the history of the Schwerin power station and its current (re)use as an art institution, provide the film’s events with a multi-layered context of social change.
The animation extends over three parts, which run in endless loops on three projectors with different audio tracks in the Kunstverein’s rooms, revealing to the viewer the fragments of a scene instead of a coherent narrative. Contrary to the attempt to expand the imaginary in order to create the appearance of a real environment, the animated illusion is confronted with the historical and real conditions of the former E-Werk. Seemingly inspired by Disney’s design, which is characterised by fast-paced entertainment, Irlinger’s animation breaks down into a radically reduced visual language of minimal movement, repetitive sequences, and precarious forms.
Far removed from the logic of aristocratic representation, Ludwig II lies powerless and motionless in a fetal position at the bottom of Lake Starnberg. While two anthropomorphised fish argue in Bavarian dialect about whether the King is dead or merely dreaming, an Andachtsjodler sung by mussels envelops the scene in a supposedly reassuring sense of home. Elsewhere, the second hand of a water-damaged pocket watch jumps back and forth across the dial without any chronological logic. An image that alludes to the nature of animation, in which inanimate objects are apparently “breathed into life” (Latin: animare), and every kind of movement is defined by timing.
Translation:
Robert Frost
Curated by:
Hendrike Nagel
Julian Irlinger (*1986, Erlangen) lives and works in Berlin. Irlinger completed his studies at the Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main, in 2017. He previously studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 2011 to 2014 and received his BA in Art History from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2011. In 2018, he was one of the participants of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in the USA. In 2022, he was a participant of the Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program BPA. He has had institutional solo exhibitions at Portikus, Frankfurt/Main (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 shown in group exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunstverein (2023), MMK Frankfurt (2022), the Dortmunder Kunstverein (2022), the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2018), Artists Space, New York (2018), and the Kunsthalle Wien (2016).
