– A Visit to the Studio of Axel Plöger
To describe an artist as a painter often evokes familiar, even stylized images—ranging from the disciplined academy class to the eccentric figure of the painter-prince. Yet a visit to the studio quickly reveals what they all share: to be a painter is above all to engage in a process. It means mixing colours and applying them with brush or palette knife, but also letting them drip, flow, splatter, scratch, or scrape—often removing or repainting what has already been done. A painter’s studio therefore typically bears visible traces of this ongoing process—just as does Axel Plöger’s studio. […]
I first met him about ten years ago at a museum. He arrived at Marta Herford with a portfolio of works on paper, placed it on the table, and invited me to leaf through a large stack of expressive A4 portraits. In a diary-like manner, he explored faces—his own as well as those of others. With a few gestural strokes and a restrained palette, he captured different heads and their individual expressions.
A year later, he turned intensively toward “invented landscapes”—forest motifs often rendered in bright, luminous colours. During an early studio visit, he showed me this extensive body of work, comprising both large and small canvases as well as works on paper. Vertical tree structures intersect with diagonals and horizontals, forming dense networks of lines and shapes. These forest images, which evoke the wild growth of a South American jungle rather than the orderly regularity of a Westphalian forest, once again revealed the painter’s obsession.
Although Plöger has explored very different motifs over the years, a consistent element runs through all his work: a deep commitment to the painterly process. This was already evident during his studies, when teachers and fellow students repeatedly encouraged him to preserve what had been achieved. As he recalls:
“My results at the end of a day often felt exhilarating—they made me happy; I had discovered something, understood something. But the next day I could return to them with almost contempt, pick up a still-dirty brush, and plunge back into new problems with a kind of destructive joy.”
Even after more than 25 years, it is these painterly questions that continue to drive his work. He is drawn to the intensity—the almost intoxicating quality—of colour and form that emerges through the process of making. In the studio, he embraces the tension between the material’s own impulses and his often intuitive decisions. Destruction is part of this process:
“It is the moment of once again destroying a finished painting—and the possible beginning of a new one.”
His paintings evolve through experimental actions that leave traces on the surface. A sequence of painterly moments gives rise to rhythmic connections of form and structure—suggestive of nature rather than depicting specific landscapes or still lifes. Expansive forms intertwine with fine, nervous structures, layering themselves in depth. At times they block the viewer’s access; at others they draw the viewer inward.
Distinctive colour harmonies and strong contrasts between transparency and density guide the viewer through the composition. Yet the individual stages of the process cannot always be reconstructed. Illusionistic surfaces—at times approaching photographic qualities—and fragile traces of the artist’s hand combine to form a heterogeneous pictorial space that ultimately resolves into unity only in the viewer’s perception. As the artist states:
“The image is formed in the mind.”
The titles of the works offer points of orientation. Some, borrowed from Homer’s Odyssey, lead the viewer on journeys through shadowy realms, only to return them once more into the light.
2015 – Friederike Fast, Kunsthalle Bonn