Magnus Plessen Hamburg, Germany, b. 1967

Born in Hamburg in 1967, he currently lives in Berlin.

Plessen’s pictoric style is characterized by the combination of additive and subtractive techniques, executed with brushwork and palette knife, as well as a plethora of materials that include tape, paint, and collage.

Plessen’s paintings move fluidly between abstraction and representation. By employing a broad range of painting techniques and dynamic compositions, his work becomes a study of perception, structure, matter, and transience. The artist’s aim is to capture fleeting emotions rather than reality. On backgroundless canvases, figures come into focus and dissolve again, whether static or caught in a blurred vortex of movement.

Plessen’s solo exhibitions include the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Espace 315 – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; White Cube, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein‑Westfalen, North Rhine‑Westphalia; K21, Düsseldorf; and MoMA PS1, New York, among others. He has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, notably at the Serralves Museum, Porto; MoMA, New York; the Goetz Collection, Munich; and the Venice Biennale.