DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition with MONTY RICHTHOFEN, titled SWALLOWED BULLETS, opening on Friday, February 7, 2025 and on view through March 22, 2025.
Image gallery
MONTY RICHTHOFEN, GLOBAL WARMING 4EVA, 2025
MONTY RICHTHOFEN, LONG LIVE PLASTIC SURGERY, 2025
MONTY RICHTHOFEN, HIGH SOCIETY, 2025
MONTY RICHTHOFEN, XROMANCE, 2025
The exhibition features a new series of eleven text-based abstractions, installed in a rhythmic procession along the walls of the main gallery space. Complementing these are new works on paper, framed under tinted acrylic glass.
Richthofen’s latest body of work explores the intersection of language and abstraction. Through drawings and paintings, text fragments — bold, obscure, blurred, sprayed over, or blacked out — embody the tension between revelation and concealment.
The paintings are integral to the poem “Swallowed Bullets”, composed by Richthofen and performed live at the opening, accompanied by composer and pianist John Carlsson. This multisensory experience invites the audience to engage with the poem both in its ephemeral live rendition and through the abstracted words dispersed across the canvases.
Excerpt from Monty Richthofen, SWALLOWED BULLETS, 2025:
I fell asleep day dreaming
And I woke up to
A nightmare I never dreamed of living
We are the plague
And
We are the cure
Corrupt
And yet so pure
In conjunction with the exhibition, an essay by Laura Helena Wurth will be published in both German and English, available prior to the opening.
Monty Richthofen (b. Munich, 1995) is a Berlin-based artist whose work challenges poetic conventions by visualizing text through painting, public writings, and tattooing. He graduated in 2018 from Central Saint Martins University of the Arts in London, where he studied performance practice and design. Notable exhibitions in 2024 included ECCENTRIC: Aesthetics of Freedom at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Capsule at Luxembourg Art Week, and THANK GOD GOD IS DEAD at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein.
Additional information
Opening: Friday, Feb 7, 6–8 PM
Performance: Monty Richthofen + John Carlsson, from 7 PM
