A solo exhibition of early paintings by André Butzer to inaugurate Galerie Max Hetzler’s London space.
The first dedicated exhibition of the artist’s seminal “Science-Fiction-Expressionism” series in the UK, 1 Eis Bitte! (1999)features works from 1999 – 2000 and one large-scale painting from the “N-Bilder” (“N-Paintings”) dated 2011.
The exhibition title 1 Eis Bitte! (1 Ice-cream Please), is taken from one of the paintings included and can be seen as referencing Butzer’s first solo show at Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin in 2003 – Chips und Pepsi und Medizin (Chips and Pepsi and Medicine). Whilst both titles are playful in their casual spoken nature, Butzer wryly critiques commodity aesthetics through the allusion to products of mass consumption and branded identities. At the same time, aware of the contradictions at play, Butzer lures in the viewer through his deliberate use of bright colours and enlivened compositions.
At times using enamel from spray cans and oil paint directly from the tube without first mixing it, Butzer further engages with themes of mass consumption and the ready-made by employing products which are industrially manufactured. Squeezing the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, without the medium of a brush, creates a physical distance between the hand of the artist and the textured surface of the painting.
An assault on the twentieth-century canon, in particular Pop art, “Science-Fiction-Expressionism” represents for Butzer a means to transform the past into the future in optical terms: “For me, it should be something eternal, like an expressive machine that works and calculates in an irrational manner. An eventful, but calm element between life and death that measures the future. The term science fiction caught my eye, since we do not know what it truly is but the term extends to our present nonetheless.”
Arriving at painting through the cartoons and comics of his youth, Butzer’s artistic influences range far and wide from Asger Jorn, Edvard Munch, Piero della Francesca, Philip Guston and German Expressionism to Walt Disney and Henry Ford – influencers of culture and industry on a mass scale.
| Duration | 13 November 2018 - 08 February 2019 |
| Times | Tuesday–Friday 10am–6pm Saturday 11am–5pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Galerie Max Hetzler |
| Address | 41 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NS |
| Contact | 442076297733 / london@maxhetzler.com / https://www.maxhetzler.com |