Prof. Dr. Andreas Beaugrand
The perceptible world changes in fractions of a second; one can hardly keep up, and now bots are writing art texts: “Introducing the new AI-powered Bing with ChatGPT’s GPT-4… Search the way you talk, text and think. Get complete answers to complex searches, chat and create.”
That is precisely what I did—I asked the machine about the art of Axel Plöger and received the following answer:
“His abstract painting allows one to detach from the depiction of real objects and instead explore forms, colors, and compositions. It opens up a world of creative freedom and individual expression. Whether geometric abstraction, informal painting, or expressive color compositions – abstract painting offers a wide range of styles and techniques explored by artists around the world.”
The algorithm did not entirely misrecognize the matter, yet it merely generated a truism. Something is missing. Anyone who reads this, or who gains their own impression through visits to Axel Plöger’s studio in Detmold, will sense it immediately.
His studio is located on the first floor of a mixed residential and commercial building from the 1990s, in direct proximity to Detmold’s former industrial area between Bahnhofstraße and Temdestraße. There, the structural remnants of the TEMDE lamp factory—founded in 1911 and closed in 1986—were recently demolished in a CO₂-intensive process, and the 12,500 m² brownfield site is now being redeveloped for “new working and living in the city.” Former socio-cultural urbanity, where artistic and creative scenes often emerge, is unfortunately giving way to bland contemporary administrative architecture and the sterile housing plans typical of 2020s 3D architectural software.
Through the stairwell one reaches the first floor, where Axel Plöger greets visitors at the studio door. Upon entering, one sees a large studio space filled with paintings, books, tables, chairs, shelves, paints, brushes, tools, a sofa corner, a sound system, a small coffee table, and much more. To the northwest lies the view of the former industrial zone described above; to the northeast, a view of houses and rooftops reminiscent of Berlin. Within the studio, an abundance of works in progress and completed pieces from the past thirty years, months, weeks, and even days.
Here, the artist—born in Detmold in 1966—works. Here his artistic practice unfolds, along with art courses for enthusiasts, literary and musical events, open studio days, and conversations about art. One feels painting, biography, authenticity—an artistic atmosphere par excellence, nourished by openness and honesty, life experience and kindness, skill and knowledge, thought and feeling.
Here art is created; here thoughts unfold into conversations, which the artist is willing to engage in—something not to be taken for granted, since art, strictly speaking, speaks for itself. This was also the view of the Cologne painter, draftsman, and graphic artist W. Gies, who, when I asked him some thirty years ago what his works meant, famously replied: “You can see that.”
Axel Plöger, by contrast, generously speaks about himself, his life, and his art, thereby offering guidance toward understanding his painting. Biographically, he freed himself from the confines of his parental home within what Peter Steinbach once described as the “Eldorado of Lippe’s civil service in Detmold.” His father worked in public service there. Plöger left his hometown early in pursuit of art and chose a life dedicated to art and culture.
After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts (HbK) in Kassel under Dorothee von Windheim from 1988 to 1994, he lived and worked in Lima (Peru) from 1996 to 2001 and has since returned to Detmold. Through numerous regional, national, and international exhibitions, as well as his intercultural engagement, he has long established a reputation—although, incomprehensibly, his work has not yet been shown in the Old Synagogue of the Oerlinghausen Art Association.
Now, however, we proverbially bring owls to Athens and present the Detmold artist Axel Plöger in 2024 at the Old Synagogue of the Oerlinghausen Art Association.
Since his early artistic beginnings, through many biographical paths and detours, he has consistently created authentic works that reflect the fundamental basis of his approach to painting. His notes from 1994, written in connection with his graduation exhibition at the HbK Kassel, testify to this enduring validity:
“1 January 1994
It is difficult to say something about my work as a painter. When a painting succeeds, no one asks why; when it does not, I lack the words to explain my painting. Painting seems meaningless, and the image seems meaningful. This is a paradox, and I cannot explain it without creating the opposite impression.”
“12 January 1994
I believe in the painting as a painted surface.”
“29 January 1994
I am a painter.
I respond to painting; I am interested in color, destruction, the search between images and models—the never certain gaze into painting.”
“8 March 1994
When I have not painted for a few days, I stand more distanced before the surface of my paintings. I know very well which painting I like and which falls away. But to begin again, I take the most hopeless, most alien image and intervene. It becomes work again through my intervention—most often with a dirty brush from the water bucket, still carrying the color residues of the previous week. A step further, back into painting.”
“9 April 1994
To the apparent arbitrariness of placing lines, forms, and smears—bordering on automatism—I oppose the separate act of observing and perceiving the entire image, marked by a line on the floor of my workspace. This line separates eye and hand. Thus, I see the painted image again as a ground for further work, from which new gestures emerge freely. My painting is strongly influenced by the tradition of panel painting, yet its liberation from its function as a stage for painting has created an autonomous medium, increasingly aware of its own possibilities. It is therefore necessary to enable the panel painting to assume a new function through new questions. When I throw a lump of pink paint onto the canvas, it may seem like destruction—but the paint adheres and connects with it.”
“11 April 1994
The color of things is the memory of the essential.”
“29 May 1994
The eyes are sensors; they respond to optical contrasts. The image arises in the mind. The essence of things is truly within us.”
Already thirty years ago, Axel Plöger expressed what he considers the essence of his art—a starting point that Mayarí Granados reaffirmed and expanded in 2012:
“He moved from gestural abstraction during his studies in Kassel toward expressive figuration, and then back again to abstraction combined with occasional figurative elements. His vigorous brushwork and expressive use of color remained constant throughout. In his recent work, he has expanded his color concept, becoming more experimental and free. His development shows consistency: he has never remained static but is always searching.”
In this search, Plöger has long since abandoned figuration entirely and devoted himself to pure painting. Like the artists of Expressionism, he is not concerned with reproducing reality but with visualizing an interpreted, deeply felt motif—expressed not through language but through the means of painting.
For many years, he has pursued the idea of creating an image that reveals what everything ultimately consists of: being, essence—in philosophical terms, ousia. Introduced by Plato, this concept describes that which truly exists in a lasting and essential sense.
In his painting, Plöger seeks to grasp the forms of existence and appearance of human life, their relationships within the world, and even in relation to a transcendent dimension, giving them validity through painting.
Unaligned with “the scene” and in deliberate opposition to shifting trends, Plöger has developed his own visual language and pursued it with unwavering consistency, expressing the sensual vitality of his works.
The essential prerequisite for his extraordinary art lies in his inventiveness and his departure from inherited artistic conventions—though deeply familiar with them, he continually subverts their rules. From the beginning of his independent career, he neither felt overly shaped by cultural processes nor inclined to participate in them excessively.
This positioning allows him to transcend rigid genre boundaries, to take complete freedom in his use of color, and to disregard formal conventions. His works thus achieve a level of independence that mirrors his own personal aspiration—to invent a world of images of elemental expressive power that opens unexpected spaces for imagination.
This is the lasting and essential quality of his art—Ousia—and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the programmatically generated superficialities of the artificial intelligence cited at the beginning. And that is a good thing.
1. See Copilot with GPT-4 (bing.com).
2. Cf. City of Detmold: City of Detmold acquires former TEMDE site, in:
https://www.detmold.de/startseite/news/news-single-view/?no_cache=1&tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=1328&tx_news_pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_pi1%5Baction%5D=detail&cHash=e692d0e568185444168202c5a17594d5 (June 4, 2020; accessed March 22, 2024), as well as, among others: Raphael Bartling: TEMDE lighting factory could become student housing complex, in: Lippische Landeszeitung, February 10, 2011; and idem: Redevelopment plans for the TEMDE site in Detmold become increasingly concrete, in: Lippische Landeszeitung, February 13, 2024.
3. Andreas Beaugrand in conversation with W. Gies (born 1945 as Maria Wilhelm Friedrich Gies), in his Cologne studio during preparations for the exhibition project W. Gies im Waldhof, Bielefelder Kunstverein, 1993.
4. Cf. Peter Steinbach (born 1948 in Lage, Lippe; widely known as a political scientist and historian): Industrialization and the Social System in the Principality of Lippe. On the Relationship between Social Structure and Social Behavior in a Late-Industrialized Region in the 19th Century, with a statistical appendix, foreword by Otto Büsch (= Historical and Pedagogical Studies, vol. 7; partly also published as Lippe Studies, vol. 3), Berlin 1976.
5. See the artist’s CV
6. Axel Plöger: Untitled (Handout for Graduation), Kassel 1994.
7. Mayarí Granados: “Golden Slumber.” On the Search for Memories, in: DISPLACE Publishing (ed.): Axel Plöger. New Paintings, Detmold 2012, unpaginated (p. 4).
8. Depending on context, Plato’s ousia can be translated as “being” (literally: “beingness”) or “essence.” See, among others: Otto Apelt (ed.): Plato. On the Immortality of the Soul, Cologne 2018.