A new publication of André Butzer’s prints from 2001 until 2021 has been published by Edition Linn. This comprehensive catalogue spans from the artist’s simplest linocuts, to his elaborate series composed in a variety of graphic techniques, comprising the vibrant colours of recent years.

Edition Linn

Works by André Butzer, Grace Weaver and Günther Förg are included in the group exhibition dark things we tell each other, opening at the Miettinen Collection on Friday, 10 June 2022. Curated by Christian Malycha, this exhibition features selected works from the Miettinen Collection.

‘What do we tell ourselves? What do we tell each other? How do we speak at all? And what about? Memories and encounters? About impressions, feelings and emotions? Last week’s shoe shopping spree? Time unwilling to pass, yet never enough? Levantine cuisine, tan lines, fleeing and displacement? Mindful astrology apps, espresso martini, Spotify discoveries, incapacitation, balcony furniture? About pain, doubt and loss? Confidence and longing, joy?

In soliloquy, direct address and veiled dialogue, Paul Celan’s »dark things we tell each other« and Ingeborg Bachmann’s »I, alone by myself, am a dark story« make it seem possible that works of art bring an absolutely subjective experience of the world into a palpable and communicable form—perhaps void or obscure, mysterious or near unspeakable, but no less valid and an example of how to endure life’s abstrusity in this flawed world.

(Although, the distance on a sofa, from which you look at and talk past each other, at times is vaster than the tacit expanse between city and country side in the same night, in the same faded colors of 3AM.)

Bachmann’s and Celan’s story thus gave the impetus to ask how images enable such encounters. How individual experience »speaks« through images »into the open, where language can also lead to encounters.« What we tell ourselves, tell a ›you‹ or say together with them, hopes for resonance. In a trembling voice, self-assured or with borrowed words, every expression is a sort of relating-oneself-to-someone. Always unfamiliar, disconcerting, new. Sensuous and immediate: Who are you? Who am I? Wherefrom? Whereto? What’s one’s own, the other’s, the mutual?

In such encounters, one’s own world is given a hold and grounding for a few brief moments—be it understanding, recognition, bewilderment. All of a sudden, disparate and opposing times, places, bodies, inside and outside unite in a transient state of potentiality. Entangled and present. Until they separate again or almost inexplicably continue their shared tale.’

– Christian Malycha

Work by André Butzer is included in the group exhibition Woodcut, which will be on view at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin from 3 June until 18 September 2022.

This exhibition is the first in a new series at the Kupferstichkabinett that will showcase artistic printmaking techniques. Each exhibition will look at a different technique and explore its features, possibilities and limitations. Works from the Kupferstichkabinett’s extensive collection will be the exclusive focus here, and will include prints on paper and vellum, as well as unique printing blocks from different eras. This exhibition takes a historical look at the development of printing as a technique in Europe, beginning with its multifaceted inception in the 15th century, continuing on to 16th-century experiments with colour, to large-format works created during the Baroque period, and stretching all the way to the revival of the technique in the early 20th century. Contemporary pieces that oscillate between the status of one-off artworks and the reproducibility of the medium illustrate the enduring importance of the woodcut as an art form. Well-known masterpieces will be on display, alongside new discoveries and rarities.

Kupferstichkabinett

For his exhibition at the Friedrichs Foundation, André Butzer placed four large paintings as well as eight watercolors from 2010 to 2021 in a thoughtfully related constellation. Along two mutually intertwined arcs, the gradual coming-into-their-own of his images becomes tangible, in which even the “figures were always abstract, already at the very beginning. They symbolized the path from an initially unknown end point to the actual beginning”. The simple togetherness of these four works gives a glimpse of the breadth and wholesomeness André Butzer’s painterly horizon of experience encompasses since 1994: A “future image of man, body, flesh and of potato chips”.

Friedrichs Foundation

André Butzer’s painting from 2004 is included in the group exhibition Unendliche Geschichten, on view at the Museum Ratingen until 31 July 2022. This exhibition presents works by 13 artists from the Oehmen collection.

Museum Ratingen

Made in close collaboration with the artist, this unprecedented huge-format survey presents the future and origins of his painting according to André Butzer. From his early works of “Science Fiction Expressionism” that centered around a cast of figures at home both in space and in culturally occupied Europe, to his exploration of abstraction’s far limits in the seemingly black N-Paintings, Butzer emerges as an ever-inventive colorist who finds a new beginning in each work.

This is the first book first to span the full range of André Butzer’s oeuvre from 1999 to 2021, the works’ progression gaining an almost musical drive of development, return, and new beginnings. The plates are interspersed with contemporary quotes from the artist that illuminate his idiosyncratic stance as a background to the work, as well as photos from his archives. The introductory essay, written by Hans Werner Holzwarth, investigates the different work phases, and places the artist’s ideas in a wider discourse of abstraction and figuration after the end of either genre. And, most importantly, the book’s pristine, huge-format illustrations fully evidence the finesse as a colorist that place this artist among the internationally most recognized painters of his generation.

“Expressionism was about going back to nature and nakedness, about inner more than outer space. Now we can give this field a new task—to be informed by seriality, post-industrialism, and modern mankind’s artificiality. So I include organic and non-organic parts, fake nature and fake human. Titian said painting is about flesh and water, and I say it is about flesh and lemonade.”

— André Butzer

Get your copy here.

TASCHEN

André Butzer has created limited Art Editions exclusively for TASCHEN, including three screen-print sets, individually painted pendant lights, and overpainted book covers. The Art Editions were presented for the first time during Art Cologne 2021 and are now available on the TASCHEN website.

The motif featured on the screen-prints presents Butzer’s unique pictorial characters: the “Wanderer”, the “Frauenbildnisse” (Portrait of Woman) and the “Friedens-Siemens” (Peace Siemens), who have embodied the fundamental themes of the artist’s work since 1999. Each print is an edition of 75, all of which are numbered and signed by Butzer. The three screen-print sets together make-up the complete series: Untited 1–3, 2021, Untitled 4–6, 2021, and Untitled 7–9, 2021.

In the exclusive Art Edition of individually painted pendant lights, Butzer projects both his abstract line and friendly face motifs onto a light orb, transforming one half of the globe into a glowing canvas (which also appears like the moon’s near side, as seen from Earth). The abstract spots and lines form a playful composition of vibrant hues, while the faces light up the room, reminding us of Renaissance depictions of the planets with human countenances. The lamps come in an exclusive Art Edition of 100. Each lamp is a unique object, individually painted and signed by the artist.

There are only 25 copies of the Art Edition of Butzer’s overpainted covers. Using the book’s yellow linen as his canvas, Butzer depicts a combination of two faces out of his cast of three characters that have come to define his pictorial universe: the “Wanderer”, the “Frauenbildnisse” and the “Friedens-Siemens”. With the artist’s signature prominently placed on the spine, this edition of the book is an extension of the work it presents: encased in a special blue clamshell box, it is an art object in its own right.

“I try to repeat all my images as often as possible and as well as possible to make them less severe. So, I do mass culture. At the same time, seriality is something I always wanted to destroy. That’s why I make so many seemingly serial works which are in fact not serial at all. This was the case with the figures, which were typologies that seemingly unfolded serially. Signs of life. They perhaps address the large soul space of human localization. Each figure is an individual and each image is individual.”

– André Butzer

TASCHEN

All good things come in threes and so do André Butzer’s collected writings. The third volume is elegantly sharp and poignant. Editor Alexander Linn continues to explore the unique fictitious universe, Butzer calls »NASAHEIM«. Boldly touching on the latter’s own work and biography, art history as well as music in numerous letters, in-depth conversations and poems. Guided by the simple question: What is real?, Butzer searches for »the actual location of painting, the space in-between. It’s a very esoteric but easy to understand conception of truth.«

Get your copy here.

Edition Linn

The second volume of André Butzer's collected writings has recently been published by Alexander Linn / Edition Linn. As an extension of the first volume, which focuses on the artist's writings from 1999 until 2017, this publication gathers an abundant selection of press releases, letters, conversations, texts and poems from 1994 until 2020, offering an intimate and personal insight into Butzer's painterly formation and practice.

Get your copy here.

For the collaboration with Celine, André Butzer’s character “Wanderer”, (2001) has been taken from the artist’s sketchbooks, lithographs and linoleum prints. Although the figure is in black and white, it is about colour and the potential for colour. This character from Butzer’s universe has been adapted onto various products across the range including embroidered black cotton thread onto raffia baskets, printed in black and white onto grained leather and featured as an artwork patch onto t-shirts and high-top sneakers.

CELINE