Philipp Stöckel – Sweet Harmony

Born in Eutin, Germany, in 1993, Philipp Stöckel studied Painting and Printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig), graduating with a Diploma in 2021. Since 2019, he has regularly participated in national exhibitions. His work has been shown in Leipzig, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover and Erfurt, including the solo exhibition feedback loop (2023) at Galerie Kleindienst in Leipzig.

For his artistic practice, Stöckel received a working grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds as part of the Neustart Kultur initiative, as well as support through the gopea art funding programme. As a representative of a younger generation of contemporary painters, he combines precise observation with experimental image-making, developing a distinctive visual language that moves between abstraction and representation.

Philipp Stöckel’s paintings explore the desires and ideals of a society shaped by digital imagery. His works draw on motifs such as hotels, mountain landscapes, swimming pools, palm trees and leisure activities, while examining themes of self-optimization, perfectionism and the pursuit of happiness. From the endless stream of images available online, he intertwines diverse visual references, translating them into his own pictorial language through a complex airbrush-based technique. In his most recent works, the forms and rich colours of plants and flowers have increasingly come to the fore, adding a new vibrant, sensual dimension to his visual language.