Jochen Plogsties: vor Tizian nach Monet

A woman sits with an upright posture in a portico. The green dress flows down her body, the face only sketchy, but her proud charisma works with all its power. It is the image of a queen. On another canvas, a wooden bridge arches in a sea of green colors. Below it water lilies, patches of vibrant color.
What do we see, what do we recognize? Greta Thunberg and Monet? It is affects with which Jochen Plogsties plays – conscious associations. The models, be they old master icons, major works of various art historical epochs or depictions from magazines, are borrowings that become independent into something of their own, completely self-sufficient. The first impression is driven to dissolution and fanned out into different levels of space, time and being. The most obvious ambiguity is formed by the grids that Jochen Plogsties places over or under his pictures. These are sometimes more and sometimes less determining in the composition, but always hinge between association, irritation and individual perception.
It seems impossible to grasp all (pictorial) levels. Like two mirrors facing each other in parallel, an infinite space opens up. What ultimately becomes central is the permeability of the experience of the world that is reflected in Jochen Plogstie’s pictures. No dress, no bridge, no lake – but pure color and an infinite play with memories, subjective imagination and collective presence.

Jochen Plogsties (*1974 in Cochem an der Mosel) lives and works in Leipzig.

1999 to 2003 studies at the Academy of Fine Arts of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, from 2003 to 2006 studies at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB) Leipzig with Prof. Arno Rink. In 2008 he graduated as a Meisterschüler (post graduated studies) with Neo Rauch. In 2011 he received the art award of the Leipziger Volkszeitung accompanied by a solo exhibition at the Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK), Leipzig. 2009 the presence scholarship at the ISCP in New York. 2014 “Kisses in the afternoon” at the Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, 2018 “Only Lovers Left Alive” at the Colletors Room, Hamburg, 2019 “Yang Chen” at the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art, Packof, Frankfurt / Oder and numerous other solo and group exhibitions.