Since July 2026 — Research assistant in the DFG-funded project "Securities of art v. Commons of art. On the conflict between authentication and collectivization in times of crisis 1870-2020" (second funding period, director: Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt)

July 2024 — Completion of the doctoral program (summa cum laude); dissertation title: "Die Beiwerke der Leere – Die Beiwerke des Lebens. Paratext und Parergon: Konstellationen der Konzeptkunst" (advisors: Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt and Prof. Dr. Karin Gludovatz) 

2023 to 2026 — Research assistant in the DFG-funded project "Securities of art. Authentication as an artistic concept in times of financial crisis 1720-2020" (director: Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt)

2020 to 2023 — Research assistant at the Institute of Art and Visual Culture, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg

2019 to 2020 — Research assistant ("wissenschaftliches Volontariat") at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

2011 to 2019 — Freelance work as a curator (see https://www.lukastoepfer.com/)

2011 to 2015 — MA: Art History in a Global Context, Freie Universität Berlin

2008 to 2011 — BA: Art History (major) and Film Studies (minor), Freie Universität Berlin

Previous research priorities (see »Monographs«):
— Conceptual Art (On Kawara, Lee Lozano, Lawrence Weiner, etc.)
— Art theory, esp. theories of the parergon (paratext, parasite, etc.)
— Visual representations of the Shoah (Gerhard Richter's »Birkenau«, Jonathan Glazer's »The Zone of Interest«, etc.)

Completed, yet unpublished research on:
— Mierle Laderman Ukeles' ecofeminist, care-oriented manifesto for »Maintenance Art« (1969) [finished text in book length]
— Robert Barry's institutional critique »Closed Gallery Piece« (1969/70) [finished text in book length]
— the aesthetic experience of being alive (starting from Karl Philipp Moritz's »Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen« [1788] and On Kawara's »I am still alive« [1970–2000]) [finished text in book length]

Current research focus (see »Current Research Project«):
— Art history and theory of authentication and collectivization (signatures, certificates, intellectual property, public domain, etc.)
— Art and finance (and their legal frameworks)

Other interests:
— Exhibition formats; theory and practice of curating
see »Exhibitions« and (as an example) the essay »Web-Site-Specificity. Zur Medien- und Ortsspezifik der digitalen Ausstellung«, in: kritische berichte, Vol. 53, No. 1 (2025), pp. 30–40, open access: https://doi.org/10.11588/kb.2025.1.108546
— Abstract painting
see, as an example, the essay »Abschattung des Unendlichen – Michael Müllers ›geschenkter Tag‹«, in: Michael Müller. Der geschenkte Tag: Kastor & Polydeukes (Ernstes Spiel. Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1.4), edited by Philipp Demandt et al., Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter 2023, pp. 57–99, https://studiomichaelmueller.com/der-geschenkte-tag-kastor-polydeukes-ernstes-spiel-catalogue-raisonne-vol-1-4 

Die Beiwerke der Leere – Die Beiwerke des Lebens. Paratext und Parergon: Konstellationen der Konzeptkunst 
2025, 448 pages, German, 17 x 24 cm 
>> Softcover — Edition Metzel (München), ISBN: 978-3-88960-257-2, https://editionmetzel.de/buecher/die-beiwerke-der-leere-die-beiwerke-des-lebens.html 
>> Open Access — Arthistoricum.net (Heidelberg), ISBN: 978–3–98501–394–4, https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1693 

Die Menschlichkeit des Massenmörders. Zur Normalisierung und Neutralisierung der Shoah in Jonathan Glazers »The Zone of Interest« 
2025, 64 pages, German, 14.5 x 21 cm 
>> Softcover — Edition Metzel (München), ISBN: 978-3-88960-258-9, https://editionmetzel.de/buecher/die-menschlichkeit-des-massenmoerders.html 
>> Open Access — Arthistoricum.net (Heidelberg), ISBN: 978-3-98501-399-9, https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1697 

Am Abgrund der Bilder – »Birkenau« (together with Michael Müller)
2023, 108 pages, German, 25 x 31.5 cm 
>> Hardcover — Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter, ISBN: 978-3-422-80126-4, https://www.deutscherkunstverlag.de/de/books/9783422801264 

Co-editor of Michael Müller's catalogue raisonné: Ernstes Spiel/Serious Game
Since 2023, currently 3 volumes, German/English/Chinese, 24 × 31,5 cm, Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter (Berlin), https://studiomichaelmueller.com/catalogue-raisonne

Including:

»Das Unermessliche. ›Birkenau‹ und der Abgrund des Angemessenen«, in: Michael Müller. Am Abgrund der Bilder – »Birkenau« (Ernstes Spiel. Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 4.1), edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen et al., Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter 2024, pp. 287–315.

»Am Abgrund der Bilder: ›Birkenau‹«, in: Michael Müller. Am Abgrund der Bilder – »Birkenau« (Ernstes Spiel. Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 4.1), edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen et al., Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter 2024, pp. 23–176.

»Abschattung des Unendlichen – Michael Müllers ›geschenkter Tag‹«, in: Michael Müller. Der geschenkte Tag: Kastor & Polydeukes (Ernstes Spiel. Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1.4), edited by Philipp Demandt et al., Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag/De Gruyter 2023, pp. 57–99.

//

Managing Editor:

KUNSTSAELE
2022/23, 928 pages, German/English, 28 × 34 cm, DISTANZ (Berlin), ISBN: 978-3-95476-422-8
This book was published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary and closing of KUNSTSÆLE Berlin — Editors: Geraldine Michalke & Michael Müller — Managing Editors: Ellen Blumenstein & Lukas Töpfer

Including: »Die KUNSTSAELE Berlin. Eine Übersicht«, pp. 7–18, and several short texts

//

Exhibition catalogues: 
See »Exhibitions/Curatorial Practice«

Video about Gerhard Richter’s “Birkenau” (2014), filmed at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, May 2026

lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/kunstgeschichten_gerhard_richter

[Second funding period, since July 2026]

Securities of art v. Commons of art. On the conflict between authentication and collectivization in times of crisis 1870-2020
A DFG project by Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt in collaboration with Dr. Lukas Töpfer
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/514731806

The rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence have intensified two opposing tendencies in the visual arts and beyond: on the one hand, the drive to secure identities and information through authorization and authentication processes, and on the other, the transformation of intellectual property into an increasingly authorless and fluid public domain. This research project examines this conflict between identifying authentication and disidentifying collectivization from an art historical and theoretical perspective for the first time. Following the three-year initial phase of the project, the second phase examines the countertendency to artistically designed authentication from 1870 to the present day. This analysis unfolds methodically on three levels: procedural, programmatic, and auctorial. On the procedural level, this tendency is characterized by the recontextualization of other artists’ material and the free dissemination of one’s own, as manifested, for example, in collages and readymades, détournement and appropriation, remix and quotation culture. These practices will be typologically organized and made structurally intelligible with the help of Gérard Genette’s concept of transtextuality. On the programmatic level, the focus is on notions and legal forms of common ownership (public property, Creative Commons, the anti-copyright movement, etc.) that artists have established as parergonal interpretive frameworks for their practices of appropriating and disseminating artistic material. At the auctorial level, the countertendency to authentication concerns non-individual, collaborative, and collective models of authorship. Here, research into quasi-corporate initiatives that maintain an ambivalent relationship to the economy through their names – Société Anonyme, Merz, General Idea, Claire Fontaine – represents a further desideratum. The second phase of the project thus aims to consider the history of artistic authentication, which was already fruitfully studied in the initial phase, in conjunction with the theories and practices that seek to liberate, or even unleash artistic materials, concepts, and models of authorship. Again, taking economic upheavals as a starting point, the focus is on crises and transformations that, while being historically concentrated in the period between 1870 and 2020, have broader social ramifications. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the hitherto largely unexplored productive conflict between the desire for secure authentication and the hope for a diversified culture of barrier-free and universally accessible information in the visual arts. The central thesis proposes a close causal connection between the conceptual appropriation of artistic materials and practices on the one hand, and of names and strategies from the business world on the other.

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[First funding period, 2023-2026]

Securities of art. Authentication as an artistic concept in times of financial crisis 1720-2020
A DFG project by Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt in collaboration with Dr. Lukas Töpfer

In the wake of advancing digitalized and globalized information technologies, the use of authentication has garnered considerable attention – not only in the fields of economics and law, but in the visual arts as well. This research project is the first to examine artistically conceived certificates and contracts, which emerged as a means of authentication that became constitutive for the status and value of artworks from the early 18th century onwards as a result of intensified capitalist and colonial trade relations. The guiding assumption is that artists in particular have reflected on these specific authentication procedures and integrated them into the structure of their works. The project addresses two central issues: first, the question of an art history of authentication in an overall social and finance-historical context; and second, the question of how authentication is conceptualized between the accessory and the work. It takes both a historical and a theoretical approach to exploring a phenomenon which has so far been only marginally and sporadically studied, and only in particular cases, but which is currently coming to the attention of a broader public in the form of digital certification practices for reproduced works of art. The hypothesis is that authentications emerge as artistically conceived entities in particular when prevailing value structures in finance undergo radical transformation. The goal is to reconstruct how these authentications have taken on the role of “Securities of art” over five critical periods between 1720 and 2020, and how they not only react to these crises, but also act as a commentary, critique, or even corrective. This is what the project aims to demonstrate by examining subscription tickets and related prints in London around 1720, caricatures and trompe-l'œils of paper money during the French Revolution era, artistically informed bonds in the Golden Twenties, authentications in New York Conceptual Art, and certificates and contracts in contemporary installations. The backdrop is thus a finance-historical spectrum ranging from the burst “South Sea Bubble” – an early speculative crisis caused by transatlantic trade in enslaved people – to the global and at the same time digital markets of the present day. The project is divided into two parts, which are intertwined in such a way as to give a different weight to art-historical constellations and art-theoretical analyses in each case. The central research questions thus address both the intertwining of art history with the history of finance and a reframing of the idea of the “work” beyond the concepts of “parergon” and “paratext” in order to analyze the shift from the authentication of art to authentication as art asserted here from two different perspectives, the historical and the theoretical.

Zum Kommunismus der Bilder: Aneignung und Enteignung in der visuellen Kultur
(WiSe 26/27, Master)

Diesseits der Bedeutung: Spannungsfelder der Kunst zwischen Empfindung und Erkenntnis, Erotik und Hermeneutik, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand 
(SoSe 26, Master)

Paradebeispiele: Singuläres, Exemplarisches und Paradigmatisches in der Kunst
(WiSe 25/26, Master)

Das Außergewöhnliche. Zur Kunstgeschichte und -theorie der Gewohnheit und ihres Gegenteils
(SoSe 25, Master)

Lebenswerke und Lebensformen: Ästhetiken der Existenz
(WiSe 24/25, Master)

Ökonomien der Aufmerksamkeit: Kunst, Konkurrenz und Konsum in den digitalen Bildkulturen
(SoSe 24, Master)

Ethos und Pathos: Moral und Gefühl in der Kunst
(WiSe 23/24, Bachelor)

Reflexe der Revolution. Kunst in Zeiten des radikalen Wandels
(SoSe 23, Bachelor)

Kunstgeschichte und Popkultur. Eine Engführung
(WiSe 22/23, Bachelor)

Das Ende der Kunst
(SoSe 22, Bachelor)

Was ist ein Kunstwerk?
(WiSe 21/22, Bachelor)

Das Einfache und das Komplexe: Extremwerte der Kunst
(SoSe 21, Bachelor)

Grenzgänger*innen. Traditionslinien der Abweichung
(WiSe 20/21, Bachelor)

Sozial- und Institutionskritik in der Kunst der Moderne und Gegenwart
(SoSe 20, Bachelor)