In Plessen’s world

“Magnus Plessen,” Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY. Through Jan. 12. �I have asked myself where the image is, is it in front of me or is it within me? When I�m working, I imagine building up the image from behind, stepping into the inside of the picture, turning around and painting the brushstroke from the underside�I was both inside and outside.� Background info: Born in 1967 in Hamburg, Germany. He’s had solo exhibitions at the Neues Kunstmuseum in Luzern, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in D�sseldorf, P.S. 1 in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His work was also included in the fiftieth Venice Biennale in 2003.

In ArtForum, here’s the interesting opening paragraph to Emily Verla Bovino’s positive review: “‘I consider many amateur photographs better than the best C�zanne,’ Gerhard Richter infamously asserted in 1966, prompting critics to once again revisit the question first asked with the advent of photography, Is painting still possible? For many, it is precisely this persistent doubt in painting that permits the medium�s survival in contemporary art practice. Painting�s profound self-reflexivity situates it at the most developed phase of Kierkegaardian despair, a despair that is both consciousness of having a self and consciousness of having a fractured rapport with that self. Ironically, it is this despair that brings painting closest to the synthesis of finitude and infinitude that Kierkegaard calls ‘faith.'” Read more.