Jörg Kuplens

You know the feeling of being alone, lost in thought as you wander. Suddenly, it seems as though strange creatures are following you, figures silently watching your every move. You look around, but all you see are withered leaves clinging to gnarled branches and rain falling softly to the ground. Yet between the leaves and grass, intertwined bodies begin to emerge, arms and legs twisting around one another like knots.

An abandoned place gradually emerges from the background. An animal watches you from the fork of a tree, its eyes following the shifting light.

Two female bodies step into the sunlight, damp from the rain, glistening and alive. Laughter echoes through the treetops; everything seems to be in motion.

In my discoveries, the ‘nature releases’, explores abandoned places where nature leaves its traces on once-inhabited terrain and within human interiors. It reclaims these spaces and breathes new life into them in unexpected ways.

Female protagonists, originally embedded in the worlds of television, film, or consumer culture, are removed from their original contexts and placed in new environments and narrative situations. This creates pictorial spaces that shift between memory, staging, and nature, raising questions about identity, longing, and perception.

Atmospheres emerge somewhere between reality and illusion. Foliage, architecture, and bodies converge to form a distinctive visual language. Shapes appear and disappear again; figurative elements slip into abstraction, and the familiar becomes strange. Contours begin to dissolve and flow—a continuous interplay at the threshold of recognition.

The aim is not to explain, but to perceive: to look again and to embrace the spaces in between. In this way, the immediate becomes tangible and what has been overlooked comes into view. The environment reveals its essential nature as something alive, in a constant state of transformation.

Through this work, I hope to sharpen our awareness...

individual exhibitions

2022 “nature releases”, Kunsthalle Art Affect, Rhineland-Palatinate

2019 Scholarship holders - Final exhibition “Rural encounters”, Rhineland-Palatinate

2019 “Living in another World”, L'Atelier, Heinersdorferstraße, Berlin-Weißensee

2018 “Fantasies between Lust and Eternity” in the art space LaGirafe, Berlin-Kreuzberg

2012 “Thanatos” at the Kowalski in Leipzig

2009 “[into the wild]” at Westphalschen Haus, Markkleeberg

2007 “Wanderung II” at the House of Democracy, Leipzig

2007 “Wanderung I” at the Leipzig City Archive

2003 “Organic Landscapes” Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in Leipzig

2001 “Wagner Variations” at the Kowalski in Leipzig

Group exhibitions

2026 The Other Art Fair Los Angeles: September 24 - 27, 2026 at Barker Hangar.

2023 European Art Prize
of the B. and G. Rosenheim Foundation
“War and Peace”, Offenbach, Hessen

2021 LOVE IN ART / Pepney Gallery - online, United Kingdom

2021 SOUL AND SPIRIT / Kunsthaus RoZig - online, United States

2020 first Heise Online Art Prize, Dessau-Roßlau

2020 Graphics and printing, Art-Hotel Vienna, Vienna

2019 1st Stadt-Kunst-Fest-Großenhain in the old town of Großenhain/Saxony

2018 11th Heise Art Prize, Dessau-Roßlau

2016 Jörg Kuplens - Dedo Gadebusch, ...