Magnus Plessen
Moving to Transparency
Sept. 26, 2009

My recent visit to the Chelsea art galleries made me notice the use of extremes in paintings that can touch upon interesting sensibilities and how works use of certain extremes become unsatisfyingly forced upon. It then turns against its own bitterness. The Gladstone Gallery on West 24th St presents Plessen carefully installed work depicting a new painting technique. The interest rests on passive observation seen continually reconstructed. The composition is defined through deliberate scrapes of paints and a juxtaposition of positive and negative space. The imagery - figures and still lifes - are depicted from the lines and spaces that seem to be noticed unconsciously by the artist.
Plessen is moving away from his dependence of photographic sources maily because his content has changed as well as his process of painting. The multiple angles of his figures return us to cubist idioms.

Alexandra Torres