Janus Hochgesand

Muy Mucho
Ludwig Museum Koblenz

Oberfläche, Strukturen und Texturen

Janus Hochgesand (b. Dierdorf, 1981; lives and works in Hamburg) describes his works as “High Intensity Paintings”—pictures defined by the compression of form and content and an unusually concentrated layering of physical material. To make them, the artist uses a broom or vacuum cleaner to abrade pigments liberally poured out over the canvas and reworking the results in iterations of aggregation and ablation. Hochgesand came to this practice from sculpture. As a student with Andreas Slominski and later with Tobias Rehberger at the Städelschule, he gradually realized that the canvas, invariably laid flat on the studio floor, is his medium. In superimposing paint strata, the artist revisits the aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, only to condense these influences in a distinctive performative-painterly practice in which music in the studio plays a key role.

Muy Mucho, or “very much,” is published in conjunction with Hochgesand’s exhibition at the Ludwig Museum, Koblenz. Detailed studies of sixteen selected works illustrate the artist’s creative approach. With essays by Sebastian Baden and Jens Asthoff and an interview with the artist by Julia Voss, as well as a foreword by Beate Reifenscheid.