Galerie Lelong inaugurates its representation of Magnus Plessen with the exhibition “Théâtre imaginaire”.
Born in Hamburg in 1967, Magnus Plessen lives and works in Berlin. A self-taught artist, he initially explored painting before turning to photography and filmmaking, ultimately devoting himself entirely to painting from 1999 onwards.
The exhibition presents a body of work comprising twenty paintings created between 2024 and 2026, revealing the latest developments in Plessen's practice. With the exception of “My Dying Father”, the paintings on view originate in the artist's imagination. As for the title of the exhibition, it suggests that this is not simply an imagined theatre, but a mental space—a place where memories, longings, and multiple narratives converge.
Within this theatrical space, where abstraction and figuration coexist, each painting asserts its own autonomy. Yet together they seem to engage in a dialogue through their actions, assuming shifting roles without a predetermined narrative. This ambiguity is reinforced by faces that transform, multiply, and at times merge into one another. Hands—a recurring motif in his work—create a tactile relationship with the body, reinforcing the sense of intimacy that permeates Plessen's paintings.
In the final gallery, the series Le Baiser extends this exploration of human closeness, evoking tenderness and complicity. Here, Plessen employs gold leaf, lending his compositions an iconic quality.
Plessen’s work was presented at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). It has been exhibited in numerous international museum exhibitions and is held by major public institutions such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) and the Rose Art Museum (Waltham). It is also included in prominent private collections including the Fundación Amparo y Manuel (Mexico City), the Goetz Collection (Munich), the Rachofsky Collection (Dallas) and the Rubell Collection (Miami), the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23 (Miami) and the Martin Z. Margulies Collection (Miami). Since 2019, he has been Professor of Painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe.
