Jochen Plogsties is renowned for his “retranslations” of well-known works of art,  from the Mona Lisa to Picasso’s Seated Harlequin to works by Rembrandt, Ingres, and Vermeer, as well as the iconic Beatles photograph at Abbey Road. More than mere copies, Plogsties’s paintings call attention to the many ways it is possible to approach an original and prompt the question of whether it is even possible to create a true copy. In the words of the artist, “The closer I get, the farther away. The more I want to make an accurate copy, the more I see my individuality.” At the same time, Plogsties’s reproductions play with the size and scale of the original paintings and coarsen the painting style, defamiliarizing these well-known images intriguingly and dismantling established ways of looking at art.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Kunstverein Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Germany, this is the first published overview of Plogsties’s work, and it includes fifty full-color images, including the artist’s most recent previously unpublished works of art.