André Butzer’s work will be presented at the Museum of Recent Art (MARe) in Bucharest, as part of the group exhibition All Our Todays. Curated by Dr. Flavia Frigeri and Ioana luna Şerban, the exhibition presents over 60 works from the museum's international contemporary art collection and explores the dialogue between figurative and abstract art. The show invites viewers to discover the various ways in which international artists have represented the idea of contemporaneity through their personal experiences and unique perspectives on the world.
 

Works by André Butzer are presented alongside Thomas Grötz and Philipp Haager in the group exhibition Sonne, Mond und Sterne – mit der Tradition nicht brechen, at Städtische Galerie, Ostfildern. The exhibition considers a longstanding human fascination with distant, unattainable realms. The dream of far-off galaxies, the afterlife or spirituality, in contrast to a cold, materialistic world, expresses a longing for infinity, sublimity and balance amidst excess. Creating such places of yearning in their paintings, Butzer, Grötz and Philipp open up spaces for thought and imagination.

Städtische Galerie

SALON Magazine presents a marvellous feature, which brings to the fore André Butzer’s recent institutional exhibitions in Italy, Spain, Japan and Austria, complemented by 7 hand-drawn sketches reminiscent of the displays at the Museo Novecento, Museo Stefano Bardini, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Museum of the Light and St Nikolaus.

The Hamburger Kunsthalle presents its first solo exhibition devoted to Albert Oehlen. Oehlen’s Computer Paintings, a rarely exhibited group of works, will be presented on the first floor of the Galerie der Gegenwart in an arrangement determined in close collaboration with the artist. Oehlen initiated his first computer paintings in the early 1990s, and a second series in the early 2000s, based on drawings he made on a computer which he then transferred to canvas. The technological aesthetic of the computer screen would have far-reaching implications as the point of departure for a complex body of work that oscillates between cool austerity and imaginative formal exuberance. 

In light of today’s debate on artificial intelligence, the idea of producing art with the help of a computer has exciting current relevance, and it becomes even more topical if we take to heart the conclusions Oehlen has drawn from his engagement with computer art, such as: ‘The work must then be finished by the human hand.’

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Albert Oehlen’s monumental sculpture Ömega Man, 2023, is now on view to the public in Weidingen, where it emerges from the vast landscape of the Südeifel. Its simplified form and slightly raised steel bars, recessed into their concrete casting, evoke the lightness of a drawing. Here, the persistent importance of the line in Oehlen’s work becomes evident, appearing simultaneously curved and controlled. In this work, the artist uses elements which are both abstract and figurative to critically examine the history and conventions of contemporary art, all the while continuing to acknowledge the importance of classical models. Massive yet fragile in its isolation, Oehlen's Ömega Man appears like a monument from the future. Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, is here written with an umlaut, thereby referring to the artist’s own name. 

Stiftung zur Förderung Zeitgenössischer Kunst in Weidingen

This new publication provides a compelling overview of exhibitions of André Butzer at Galerie Max Hetzler since his first with the gallery in 2003, charting his 17 solo and 10 group exhibitions in Berlin, Paris and London. Installation views and large-format illustrations of all exhibited works are accompanied by contemporary texts including reviews and catalogue essays.​ The book is now available for purchase on the Galerie Max Hetzler publications website. 

Learn more

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

Under the direction of Oliver Hirschbiegel, actor Ben Becker on screen impersonates the contemporary painter Albert Oehlen and re-creates a painting that Oehlen himself and in parallel is creating step by step in the background, with the actor improvising the process in front of the camera. The finished on-screen painting is an original “Oehlen” on which the artist himself never laid hands. The off screen blueprint painting was destroyed after principal shooting had finished.

Originally planned to be a performative statement the projects developed into a fully fledged feature film of 92 minutes, crossing formal boundaries and questioning the meaning of the creative process and the struggle for authenticity on various levels.

The Painter follows the artist / actor as he is struggling and suffering along this process with us watching in joyful despair and what might happen next until the white canvas has turned into a finished painting.

The outcome is a one-man rollercoaster that appears to be a documentary but in fact is a staged and guided improvisation with the “real” process happening behind the camera. The Painter is a constant flow of the artist’s journey with elements of farce and comedy topped with emotional moments of truth...in front of and behind the camera and leaving it up to us to decide what is real and/or authentic.

Watch the trailer here.

Picture Tree International

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