The exhibition by Max Freund and Paul Riedmüller brings together two artistic practices that have developed independently over the years, yet in continuous professional dialogue shaped by their friendship. Their first joint presentation at Horizont Gallery allows these two artistic attitudes to become visible simultaneously.

Guided Hands
Joint exhibition by Max Freund and Paul Riedmüller
13 May - 24 June, 2026
HORIZONT Gallery, Budapest

The exhibition by Max Freund and Paul Riedmüller brings together two artistic practices that have developed independently over the years, yet in continuous professional dialogue shaped by their friendship. Their first joint presentation at Horizont Gallery allows these two artistic attitudes to become visible simultaneously.
Although Freund and Riedmüller apply distinct painterly languages and image-making logics, they share a common point of departure, the fusion between the materially grounded, physical practice of painting and the weightless, immaterial nature of digital image production, as well as an understanding of painting as a mental space. The exhibition focuses not only on these parallels but also on the contrasts within and between the images: structured and organic, digital and material, familiar and alien. Riedmüller’s technologically pristine, rendered pictorial spaces stand in sharp contrast to Freund’s organically structured paintings composed of gestures and fields of color. Both practices engage a specific form of horror vacui, as Riedmüller’s works appear as densely populated, visually saturated image spaces, while Freund’s paintings reveal a more structural, lyrical form of saturation operating within the background layers of the pictorial field.
Their primary sources of inspiration derive from their immediate visual environment, personal photographic archives, as well as found visual materials (books, textiles, flea market objects), alongside internally generated images emerging from imagination. The analog and digital image sources operate in parallel, and, when overlaid, generate a shared intermediate space in which elements of everyday material culture and digital imagery interpenetrate. The collected images—predominantly already mediated—are selected, combined, and further processed through individual logics, then reconfigured through painterly means, translating transient digital and mental images into physical presence and material form. This is not a matter of copying, but of intervention and appropriation, through which the tradition of painting is reinterpreted from the perspective of digital imagery. In this way, painting’s role—as well as the physical presence and aura of images—is reaffirmed within a screen-dominated visual environment. The paintings function as time capsules, condensing found visual elements that are enriched with new layers of meaning and temporality through painterly gesture. The merging of familiarity and estrangement creates an uncanny effect that continuously alters the distance between the viewer and the work. The process does not end on the canvas; over time, the analog painting is again digitized and re-enters circulation as an index image.
The title of the exhibition, Guided Hands, refers both to the traditional artistic gesture—the trace of the hand—and to questions of authorship and originality in digital and analog image-making. It also subtly points to the interrelated creative processes, the exchange of ideas and visual references between the artists, and the presence of technology in image production, with its specific possibilities and limitations.
The paintings in the exhibition take everyday objects and symbols as their starting point, while evoking historically established genres such as still life and landscape. These seem not merely as representations, but as mental and perceptual spaces in which the viewer encounters both familiar motifs and contradictory pictorial situations.
The dimensions of the canvases (160 × 120 cm, 100 × 80 cm, 30 × 20 cm) are deliberately aligned with the concept of the exhibition. The standardized, commercially available formats emphasize the ‘ready-made’ character of the images, while the smaller works, produced in the artists’ own studio and taking the form of handmade, box-like constructions, also evoke notions of craftsmanship. These works, presented in a dual arrangement, establish a more intimate mode of engagement; their compact format evokes the act of viewing images on a screen. In contrast, the scale of the large paintings invites not only observation but physical entry into the pictorial space.
The installation functions as a spatial structure that emphasizes the physical presence of the works. The stretched canvases are slightly offset from the wall, creating a floating effect. This approach not only reinforces the objecthood of the paintings but also establishes a network-like system of relations among them, in which the works operate not as isolated units but as elements in dialogue. This system is held together by elastic cords functioning as both physical and conceptual elements. The tension they introduce activates the space while creating temporary, flexible connections between the compositions.
The exhibition immersively renders a form of expanded perceptual reality in which everyday relations and constellations—such as friendship, collaborative thinking, analog and digital image-making, and the relationship between artwork and viewer—become perceptible.
.
.
.
Max Freund (1992, Vienna) employs a range of media beyond painting in his artistic practice, including drawing, collage, and embroidery. He draws inspiration from literature, music, as well as various found objects and textile materials. His practice examines the gestural, material-based functioning of painting and its translatability into other media, with a particular focus on the interrelated dynamics of color, rhythm, and composition at the intersection of abstraction and figuration.
In recent years, his work has been presented in numerous national and international exhibitions, including Where Earth Meets Sky (König Galerie, Munich, 2025), Spoons of Time (Sotheby’s, Vienna 2024), Blümchen (Ravnikar Gallery, Ljubljana, 2023), and The Cuteness Factor (Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2023).

Paul Riedmüller (1989, Graz) explores the tension between digital images and the material-based practice of painting. His paintings are based on “found” media images and online visual fragments, which he transforms into new compositions using painting techniques.
In addition to his paintings, Riedmüller regularly publishes zines and creates murals of various scales. Riedmüller, along with Max Freund and others, is a member of SOYBOT, a Vienna-based printing and micro-publishing collective.
His works have been featured in several international solo and group exhibitions, including Toxic Fingers (Studio Gross, Tokyo, 2025), As You Wish (Posta Space, Sofia, 2025), Green Lemon (La Bibi, Palma, 2025), and TONE POEM (The Hole, Los Angeles, 2024). He is represented by the Horizont Gallery, where his solo exhibition Blender took place in 2024.

Text : Ajna Maj