Tailpipe Apocalypse

2025 | Soloexhibition at Kunstverein Ingolstadt

Endrohr Apokalypse unfolds across approximately 300 square meters within the brutalist architecture of the Kunstverein at the Stadttheater Ingolstadt, forming a multi-layered scenario between sacrality and technological high fidelity. The church-like space, with its seven columns provides the spatial framework for a site-specific exploration of Faith, technological progress, and industrial exhaustion.

With works created especially for the exhibition, the show explores parallels between technology and theology: from ritualised practices and promises of salvation to the question of how technical systems are increasingly taking on functions that were previously reserved for religious orders. The seven supporting pillars of the room become carriers of a parallel shift between the Bamberg Apocalypse and the automotive city of Ingolstadt. Seven tailpipes replace the trumpets of the Apocalypse, emitting the sounds of bodybuilders straining and lifting weights – a resonance space of strength, optimization and faith in progress.

The works reflect technology as an effort to save effort, while at the same time drawing attention to the struggles of the art and culture scene. Against the backdrop of the crisis in the automotive industry and cutbacks in municipal funding, the Kunstverein itself has become a symbol of a cultural institution whose continued existence is now in question – once a hallmark of the city’s progress.
The exhibition reflects on the self-inflicted consequences of modern hubris, the belief in progress and the exhaustion of a society producing its own revelations.

Endrohr Apokalypse – Schriftzug
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At the entrance, How big is Walter Röhrl’s Vorsprung durch Technik really marks the beginning of the journey. The work functions as a technical baptismal font: the slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ (advancement through technology), coined by rally legend Walter Röhrl, refers to the pioneering spirit of Ingolstadt’s Audi era and the belief in technical superiority, which has increasingly shifted towards data, algorithms and artificial intelligence. The piece opens up space for reflection on the extent of technological advantage – and about the impact when technological promises themselves become new promises of salvation.

The exhibition opens with Kinetic Fart (Movement Path Impetuousness): angelic messengers float between heavenly clouds of incense and earthly car air fresheners. The programmed air fresheners act as impassable movers, like intermediate beings that simultaneously evoke sacred smoke signals and the scented presence of car interiors. In their floating indeterminacy, they tie in with the archetypal starting point for systems of order, over which hovers the question of humanity’s position in the cosmos and the associated collection and archiving of its data.

Endrohrmemory acts as an acoustic archive of the Ingolstadt tuning scene. Exhaust coughs, acceleration rhythms and characteristic sonic imprints form playful pairs arranged like communion wafers. Between play and ritual, a collective auditory memory emerges in which engine sound becomes a city’s creed.

The seven pillars of the room are occupied by the Endrohrleuchter: tailpipes from the tuning scene replace the seven trumpets of the Bamberg Apocalypse. From them unfold the sounds of trained bodies under extreme stress – soundscape that intertwines physical strength, technical intensification and sacred proclamation.


Tailpipe cushions shift the focus to calm and devotion. The sculptural cushions draw on forms and materials from automotive interiors and are presented like devotional objects. Over 10,000 cross-stitches are reminiscent of the structure of a rosary – a contemplative practice between repetition, patience and physical exhaustion.

Digital Schlaraffenland (cybernetic ball pit version) is a virtual paradise consisting of 50,000 modified plastic dice with zeros and ones – the bits that form the basic building blocks of the digital. The work makes the unimaginable variety of combinations in digital logic literally tangible as ‘virtual reality’: everything can be translated into numbers and algebraic structures, and data becomes manipulable like divine likenesses. Bits, as the grammar of the digital world, open the doors to a paradise of unlimited possibilities.

Düsen nach Jägerart (Trinity) consists of three possessed office chairs rotating in a circle. The circle symbolises a paradisiacal state of perfection that Kepler was unable to maintain: the elliptical orbit of the Earth marks the first affront to humanity. Technology, movement and circulation intertwine here in a mechanical ballet that oscillates between utopia, chaos and the experience of imposed limits.

The interactive work What does it sound like when you press them all at once (four-button type via remote control) takes up the motif of crucifixion. A retrofittable central locking system, stored for years in the artist’s attic, is placed on the cross: all four buttons can be triggered simultaneously via a remote control. The work addresses agency, control and the reinterpretation of sacred motifs through technology.

Thanks to Karin Derstroff, Ludwig Hauser and the team at the Kunstvereins Ingolstadt