“An artist such as Erwin Pfrang inhabits an alternative world, a tiny microcosm of subjectivity,” the German art historian Carla Schulz-Hoffmann has written. “And he lives that life uncompromisingly, with all the limitations and hardships that it entails.” Consisting of strange and often grotesque paintings and works on paper, Pfrang’s tiny microcosm is inspired by two unlikely sources—Italy and the Irish writer James Joyce. He has completed three cycles of drawings that address Joyce’s Dubliners and Ulysses, including particularly poignant ones for the Circe episode. Though he was born and grew up in Munich in the 1960s and 70s, Pfrang has worked in Italy—in Tuscany’s Montepulciano and Val d’Orcia, and in Catania, Sicily. This exhibition, which includes unseen work from the last few years, is centered around a sinister painting called The Ghosts Ask. —Elena Clavarino