The name Magnus von Plessen often comes up in discussions of new painting from Berlin—but how many people have actually seen his paintings? They’ve yet to be exhibited in Berlin itself. In 2001 they were shown at the Neues Kunstmuseum Luzern; then, last winter/spring, there was a small exhibition at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen near Düsseldorf. Now his most recent paintings have been shown in Zurich—the first-ever gallery exhibition for this painter, which might be explained by the fact that his production is limited to just a few paintings a year.

Von Plessen’s earlier works were

Entering the gallery, one found the climate of the building on Limmatstrasse drastically different from what one would expect: Through a pair of humidifiers, water used to wash the bodies of corpses in Mexico’s metropolis was being atomized into superfine particles. The rinse water of the anonymous dead settled on the skin of the living and penetrated them when breathed in. More than just the humidity level was being altered. Unsettling social realities, normally excluded from the world of art, were permeating the atmosphere, hardly noticeable but nonetheless powerfully present. A work similar