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Artist: André Butzer

Galerie Max Hetzler presents Kirschmichel, a solo exhibition by André Butzer of twelve paintings and two drawings. In conjunction with this exhibition at Goethestraße 2/3, the gallery space at Bleibtreustraße 15/16 hosts a double exhibition by Jinn Bronwen Lee and André Butzer.

The distinctive characters which populated his images in the late 1990s and early 2000s have fully returned to the paintings of André Butzer. On the verge of abstraction and figuration but solid and enduring, they step into appearance: The Women, embodying birth, death and benevolence, the Wanderers in their hardship and hope, as well as the childlike Friedens-Siemense. Even new characters come to the fore, including composite figures such as the ominous Kirschmichel, 2022. This type of Synthetic Painting has been at the core of Butzer’s practice since 1999, forming the crucial challenge to the wholeness and unison he strives for painterly.

Butzer’s colour unfolds with great brilliancy, saturated and in meditative flatness. For instance, set upon bold red in vibrant brushstrokes, Women, Wanderers and Friedens-Siemense come together in a monumental untitled painting, filling an entire wall of the exhibition space. Between intimacy and monumentality, every painting and work on paper holds its own. Poignantly expressed in the head of a Wanderer, 2022, which is situated within clearly defined fields of yellow, red and blue, recalling Mondrian.

With mischievous glances, the male and female figures communicate amongst each other. Exchanging looks of attraction, at times even of an almost erotic nature.

‘In my Kirschmichel exhibition something is celebrated. An autumn celebration
in spring time. Fertility is an event of the seasons and of the colours.
Colours are inherited and the heritage. That’s what is celebrated here. The women and the
synthetic men share lines of sight at this folk festival. But they are just images.
There’s nothing on them. The alpine countryman drives the cattle down the mountain and Empedocles walks up
and plunges himself into the mountain.’

A. Butzer
22 February 2023

André Butzer (*1973, Stuttgart), lives in Berlin-Wannsee. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in international institutions, including the Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen (2022); YUZ Museum, Shanghai, and Museum of the Light, Hokuto (both 2020); IKOB Musée d’Art Contemporain, Eupen (2018); Växjö Konsthall (2017); Bayerisches Armeemuseum, Ingolstadt, and Neue Galerie Gladbeck (2016); Kunstverein Reutlingen (2015); Künstlerhaus – Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz (2014); Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, and Kunsthistorisches Museum / Theseustempel, Vienna (2011); Kunsthalle Nuremberg (2009); Kunstverein Ulm (2005) and Kunstverein Heilbronn (2004).

Works by André Butzer are held in the collections of prominent museums including Aurora Museum, Shanghai; Art Institute of Chicago; Carré d’Art, Nîmes; Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York; Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Faye G. Allen Centre for the Visual Arts, University of Washington, Seattle; Friedrichs Foundation, Weidingen / Bonn; Hall Art Foundation, Reading / VT | Derneburg; Hölderlinturm, Tübingen; IKOB Musée d’Art Contemporain, Eupen; Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin State Museums, Berlin; LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Marciano Art Collection, Los Angeles; MARe Museum, Bucharest; MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museo Novecento, Florence; Nationalgalerie / Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Rubell Museum, Miami; YUZ Museum, Shanghai, among others.

Butzer’s work is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Friedrichshafen, until 19 March 2023. He will also have a solo presentation at the Salon Dahlmann / Miettinen Collection, Berlin, 27 April – 27 August 2023 and the Kebbel-Villa | Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, 11 June – 23 July 2023, as well as a major retrospective at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 8 May – 10 September 2023.