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.

Work by André Butzer and Carroll Dunham is included in Mix & Match. Die Sammlung neu entdecken at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Celebrating the institution’s 20th anniversary, the exhibition presents some 350 works and series in a new display which spans 120 years of art history. Characterised by a spirit of curiosity and experimentation, the new hang invites visitors to rediscover  the collection in themed galleries and unconventional juxtapositions that transcend epochs, styles, and media.

Pinakothek der Moderne

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

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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.«

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Edition Linn