Jörg Lozek - Im Zimmer

Galerie Templon is proud to present the first solo show in France of young Leipzig painter Jörg Lozek. « Im Zimmer » (In the Bedroom) is a powerful group of twelve uncanny interiors, halfway between decay and reconstruction, in which the same recurring figure refuses the spectator’s gaze.

Born in 1971, Jörg Lozek was born in Chemnitz in East Germany and pursued his studies at the Leipzig Art Academy, now internationally known as the epicenter of the vibrant “New Leipzig School,” which emerged around 2000. Jörg Lozek, like his friends from this informal scene - David Schnell, Tim Eitel or Matthias Weischer - develops the same interest in history, architecture and an underlying questioning of socialist aesthetics and figurative painting.

With this new series of paintings, Jörg Lozek obsessively explores interiors that are ambiguous both in their function and period. Furniture piles up. Odd accessories decorate the walls. Each texture is rendered with an impressive attention to details: the grain of the hardwood floors, the softness of a carpet, the humidity of a stone wall about to collapse. The result is a mixed impression of serenity and yet chaos. Standing in the middle of these mysterious rooms, the same character with hidden features, either boy or teenager, stands completely alone. As the artist explained “he should be performing simple activities that don’t call forth any additional questions. His attention is directed inwards”. The titles hardly give any context: “The Wait”, “The Research”, “The Place”. Far from being narrative or psychological, Jörg Lozek’s paintings explore the formal relationships between being, time and space.

As art historian Oliver Kornhoff explains in the essay of the exhibition catalogue: « Jörg Lozek’s pictures meet our need for painting in a manner that is full of curiosity, subversive and reflective. His paintings bear witness to the quest for creating an identity, for disorder and non-places, of garrets and rooms evoking memory ».