The German-based artist invites viewers to question their memories, visual habits and the nature of reality.
Jochen Mühlenbrink is a #German artist that has risen to the top of the charts for us. Studying at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and graduating in 2007 as a master student of Markus Lüpertz, Mühlenbrink is schooling us on reality through hyper-realism.
Although he's also a muralist and sculptor, his dreamy paintings is what makes us stop in our tracks.
Just think about all the times you stare out the car window, as the world passes us by. Sometimes you feel like you want to be part of everything, and sometimes you feel you want to be around nothing. But for a split second, there's a transition that happens where you're part of both. I feel like that's what's happening when we stare at his #paintings; a moment where if you're edgy and isolated, you can be mischievous and silly. A moment where you feel #lonely, you can feel connected. It's a wild thing to think about (and see) when you stare at his style of paintings, which lately has been depicting foggy windows and mirrors with small doodles that look like it was drawn by your hand. The #hyperrealism makes it look like a photograph, but each stroke is meticulously painted, even down to the water droplets and streaks dripping down the image.
These paintings have an eeriness to them – are you looking at someone else's image or are you imagining that you doodled these images yourself in front of a #foggy window? That thought plays a ton of tricks in your mind but is a fascinating place to be.
Mühlenbrink has stated that a lot of his work is intuition, from his use of color down to his pre-show exhibitions – there's never a set ritual. Each day, according to Mühlenbrink, is something completely new. In this day and age when there's so much turmoil, politics and anger, we could all learn from this perspective. You can put us firmly in the Jochen Mühlenbrink camp from now on.
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