Few biographies leave behind a complete archive. Most persist first and foremost as traces—in images, in relationships, in what is repeated, cited, or strategically withheld. Philipp Gufler’s work begins precisely in these lacunae, folding fragments of histor(ies) into his artistic practice. “Imitations of Paul” finds him entering into dialogue with Paul Hoecker (1854–1910), a long-marginalized painter whose extensive oeuvre has yet to be fully catalogued. In “Imitations of Paul”, Gufler takes Hoecker’s multi-layered biography as the point of departure for an act of artistic identification. What is at stake is less a retrospective act of making visible than a productive mode of approximation. The textile and ceramic works on view explore how new forms, images, and narratives might emerge from fragmentary archival traces. Imitation here is not conceived as mere replication; rather, drawing on drag as an art form, it operates as a practice of appropriation, exaggeration, and transformation—a procedure that establishes proximity, acknowledges difference, and, through repetition, produces something distinctly its own. Gufler conceives of history not as a closed narrative merely awaiting completion, but as an open configuration that can be extended, shifted, and rewritten through artistic reference. In the deliberate reprise of motifs, attitudes, and gestures, what emerges is not a facsimile but a new proposition. As a founding member of the Paul Hoecker Research Group, Gufler himself is directly involved in the collective research into Hoecker’s life and work. In this exhibition, he translates this shared investigative process into an autonomous artistic perspective. “Imitations of Paul” unfolds within a field of tension between collective knowledge production, personal affiliation, and the question of how historical proximity can generate something artistically new. The exhibition is accompanied by “Spuren von Paul | Traces of Paul” (Splitter 19), Forum Queeres Archiv München in cooperation with BQ, a publication that brings together exhibition and research and is conceived as a collective project.