Magnus Plessen (b. 1967, Hamburg, Germany, lives and works in Berlin, Germany) is a Professor of Painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe since 2019. Magnus Plessen's paintings are characterised by the meticulous construction of the image and the focus on the painterly process. Through his work, he does not seek to represent reality, but rather depict emotional states. Ghost-like human figures populate Plessen's paintings, slipping into the realm between figuration and abstraction. His characteristic color palette is populated by muted yellows and bright pink hues, and in his latest body of work, he makes use of charcoal to add depth and darkness, both visual and symbolic. Application and subtraction, collage and use of negative space are techniques central to grounding his practice.

Magnus Plessen’s latest body of work was shaped by a moment of personal reckoning: the death of his father and a return to childhood memories of ancestral portraits. Paintings emerge from this intimate landscape, turning memory and perception into tactile, layered images that oscillate between abstraction and figuration. The material density of his faces gives them a tactile immediacy, evoking the sense that they could be physically held in one’s hands.

Plessen has had numerous solo exhibitions, including: The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts; Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21, Düsseldorf and MoMA PS1, New York, as well as numerous solo gallery exhibitions, including: White Cube, London and Hong Kong, Gladstone Gallery, New York, Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf and Berlin and Mai 36, Zurich. Plessen has participated in various international group exhibitions, including: the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Museu Serralves, Porto, Goetz Collection, Munich and was represented at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). Works by Magnus Plessen have been placed in important international collections, incl. Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Kunstsammlung NRW K20/K21; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.