Ralf Pflugfelder is an artist living and working in Berlin, London and L.A..

Through appropriation and associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the mythical, his artworks materialise in many different forms and scales: from sculpture to writing, painting to architecture, installation, performance, plagiarism, collaboration and commissioning.

Pflugfelder’s work involves a questioning of knowledge and language, history and truth — a reinvention of the modes of appearance and the creation of a work of art.


At the moment he is working on the adaptation and appropriation of 100 artists’ Bios.

He has been commissioned to remake the Remastered — The Art of Appropriation exhibition at Kunsthalle Krems.

He is also working on a play/script called Von Nasenzwang’s Threefold Coercion of Art(ificial) Hell about the Tristesse Royale in contemporary art, loosely based on Goethe’s Faust and Mann’s Doctor Faustus, to be performed in 2021 and to be made into a film in 2022.

Together with R. Wu he co-authored the publication RARA: Speak at the Van Eyck Institute. It has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Luma Arles.

RARA (Rain Wu + Ralf Pflugfelder) were artists-in-residence at the Thalie Art Foundation. The project culminated in the show From Strata of Memory to Layers of Rock in the new ThalieLab gallery space and the publication of an Atlas.
FSoMtLoR has been the inspiration for the XXII Triennale di Milano — Broken Nature.

RARA recently made a massive 水石 Suiseki (The Rock Nobody Could Lift) for the Keelung Biennial in Taiwan.

He is constructing a series of Utopian Huts in various locations around the world, of which four have been completed, three more are in planning.

He is also designing One—Off houses for collectors, the only condition being that the design fee is a multiple of the Turner Prize prize money.

He is building a new studio on the Suffolk Norfolk border in the form of a Temple House loosely based on the Temple Houses by John Penn.

Pflugfelder founded the Heaterism movement and wrote the Heaterism Manifesto, which came out of the ongoing project The Sun Shineth Upon the Dunghill, and Is Not Corrupted, consisting of 100 artworks made out of electric 2 bar heaters.

He has been commissioned to set fire to the Ferrari Mondial of a collector, the staging of which he is working on (Fire Mondial).

He has commissioned Mr. Tian (Shenzhen) to paint All Neo Rauch Paintings (up to 1999) Upside—Down, to be completed and exhibited in 2021.

Pflugfelder is producing a series of (500) Facebook Friends made out of found cardboard boxes who together with Rauschenberg’s Cardboards will attempt to take over Facebook.

Together with J. Lejins he is constructing an exact 1:1 copy of the top floor of Corbusier’s Maison Atelier Ozenfant which will occupy the entirety of their studio.

He is also working on a more esoteric follow-up to Birksted’s Le Corbusier and The Occult called The Occult and Le Corbusier which may or may not end up as a doctoral thesis.

Pflugfelder Lejins will open a new gallery space (JRK) in 2021 with their first curated show being The Ultimate Show on War and Terror.

He is advising the UK government on a post-Covid post-Brexit conceptual arts strategy for England and Wales until 2022/2026.

Ralf Pflugfelder was part of the very first Contemporary Art Practice: Public Sphere / Critical Practice cohort at the Royal College of Art in London. He is also teaching at various institutions.

Once a year he is doing a lecture performance about his work at the Villa Medici in Rome.

He started the artist collective Surgeons & Magicians.

He is making more and more work under the moniker Higher Powers command (after Polke’s Höhere Wesen befahlen).

Higher Powers command part of the Rubell Collection.

He is making more and more work under the monikers Charles Avery and Scott Avery, Charles & Scott Avery, and M. Cattelan.

Pflugfelder is working on a Future Retrospective of his work for Tate Modern’s Level 3.

He is one of Art Review’s Future Greats.

He is going to the studio every day where he tells his assistants what to make.


Pflugfelder’s work has been shown at

Manifesta / FLACC Belgium / Wysing Arts Centre Cambridge / Performa Biennial New York / Kunsthaus Graz / Gwangju Biennale / based in Berlin / Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam / Kunstraum Lüneburg / 0047 Oslo / SKOR Amsterdam / Program Gallery Berlin / Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Chile / Le 104 Centquatre Paris / Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf / Arnolfini Bristol / Lyon Biennial / Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig / Chisenhale Gallery London / The Royal College of Art London / The Royal Academy / Art Basel Miami / Abu Dhabi Art / Frieze Art Fair / et al.


︎ Contact Studio 1
︎ Contact Studio 2

︎ Contact Gallery 1
︎ Contact Gallery 2



Heater Raum, Prototype IV (after Pichler)

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