JOEGGU HOSSMANN

Joeggu Hossmann‘s content is radically contemporary. His motifs are collected, compressed impressions of everyday life, reflected and frozen with an intensity that captivates the audience. His protagonists and their environments merge together with the glowing, muted colors of his fore and backgrounds. Pixelated abstractions of color help to blur these boundaries. The narrative in his work, is painted in an untamed, changing rhythm. through the shifting mood of the texts which move from calm, almost pensive, to loud, even shrill, Hossmann shows his view of the world. Travel impressions and the digital age serve as an inexhaustible inspiration. Impressions from afar, like the strange smells and sounds that he absorbed during his travels across the USA, Australia, Mexico, Vietnam and beyond, are brought back home get to be painted like an endless film. For Hossmann content is valued above aesthetic composition.

In documenting the current zeitgeist, Hossmann is combining traditional oil painting with our digital age. Despite the advances in technology, painting has not been superseded yet and still provides new stimuli and impulses. The main focus of his practice is to reflect and criticize the absurdities and contradictions of our everyday life and social coexistence in the light of the effects of global networks, the ‘24/7‘ availability of information and new digital technological innovation on the people and their identity. He transcribes imagery found on the internet into traditional paintings and in doing so presents a collective visual memory of the virtual world.

 At times Hossmann‘s thematic concerns are clear through his visual technique but equally he encourages the viewer to reflect themselves. Through surreal motifs and the juxtaposition of color and light, context and time, he enhances the image. Similar to the daily flood of media images and messages, the individual elements of color application form a greater whole in his works. He captures impressions that he passes to the viewer as a subjective reflection of modern man and his time.