Jörg Kuplens

You know the feeling of being alone on the road, lost in thought? But suddenly you realize that strange creatures are following you, mythical creatures are looking at you or female figures are silently watching you. You look around and see only wilted leaves waving on gnarled, rooted branches. Rain drips softly onto the leaves on the ground, exposing the fine, slender limbs of a hand. Several lying, intertwined bodies become clearly visible. Apparently hundreds of arms and legs lie knotted in the grass.
The raindrops slowly fill a rusty vessel with water. It rustles in the bushes and a bird hops out and drinks from it. A beetle basks in a coffee machine lying on its side. Wires and cables clutch branches and stones. A battle between nature and machines. A shed growls quietly in the wind, abandoned and barely habitable. An unknown animal sits in the fork of a tree and watches you. Its eyes change direction as the light changes.
Suddenly, two naked female bodies appear. The plump forms glow in the sunlight. The dampness of the diminishing rain makes their bodies glisten. Laughter rings through the treetops. The plants present their blossoming forms. They unfurl their leaves and spread their limbs. The surroundings are in motion!

In my discoveries, the ‘nature releases’, personal moods and absorbed atmospheric impressions combine to form a unique formal language. Conglomerates of roots, embankments, tree trunks, old scrap metal, electrical appliances and bodies, limbs and animal carcasses form the motifs that are depicted in the pictures.

My works move constantly on the border between figuration and abstraction, they operate on the border of the recognisable and the recognisable, where exciting contrasts of solid and dissolving form, of organic details and atmospheric moods, of spatial details and temporal dimensions, of the concrete and the imaginary arise. This gives rise to a range of associations that oscillate between fantasy, memory and criticism.

In this way, the abstract depiction of familiar figurative worlds opens up new spaces of experience for the viewer. It allows for a multitude of subjective interpretations. It can stimulate the imagination, which often seems to be buried due to everyday constraints and against the backdrop of the fast pace of life. The mass flood of media images, which often flood in at will and can hardly be warded off, often prevents creative and imaginative thought processes.

Consequently, it is not the distance that i...

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

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

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, sculptures, paintings and graphics
Gallery Karin Büsch, Berlin

2010 “[in]visibl...