La Plataforma explores the limits of humour with Matti Schulz

Throughout history, artists have sought to make an impact and move us through painting, whether through technical mastery and realism or through the themes, scenes and moments they chose to depict. But what happens when, instead of moving us, a work seeks to bewilder, make us laugh, unsettle us or even question what we understand humour to be?

With Unfunny Paintings / Pinturas sin gracia, La Plataforma presents the first solo exhibition in Barcelona by Matti Schulz, a German multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin who explores the language of irony and irreverence to create a visual universe that feels familiar yet strangely unsettling.

Between the recognisable and the absurd

Matti Schulz’s visual universe is often made up of elements that form part of our collective imagination: famous figures, social behaviours, everyday scenes and references to popular culture that, when removed from their usual context, take on a new and unsettling logic — such as Cristiano Ronaldo appearing in Mallorca, Rosalía relocating to Berghain, or a group of Serious Germans finding themselves on a beach beneath an intense red sky.

There is always something in these scenes that does not quite fit. Small anomalies that unsettle what we thought we recognised and force us to reconsider the images before us. Is it a joke, or is it intended as a critique? Could it be nothing more than simple absurdity? In Schulz’s universe, everything has a place, so perhaps it is all of these things at once.

When humour becomes uncomfortable

Behind this apparent lightness lies a particularly attentive eye for the contradictions of contemporary society. In some of his works, two figures raise a toast while one of them, faceless, holds a bag from the German chain KiK; in another, an Atomic Horse expels a fluorescent green substance in front of nuclear power plants. Absurdity thus becomes a tool for addressing issues such as consumption, identity, the cult of the body, and our relationship with popular culture and progress. Yet Schulz avoids turning his images into categorical statements: there is no moral to decipher and no single possible interpretation.

About the artist

Matti Schulz develops a multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, installation and object-based art. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden and the University of Barcelona. His work combines humour, absurdity and irony to address social and cultural issues through familiar images displaced from their original context.

Based in Berlin, where he founded and began curating the independent space Frieren Room in 2022, Schulz has exhibited his work in cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, Kinshasa and Mallorca. His work is also held in institutional and private collections.

Unfunny Paintings / Pinturas sin gracia opens on 17 September at 7 pm at La Plataforma and will be on view until 22 October.