André Butzer

André Butzer's (b. 1973) work is characterized by an intensive exploration of the limits and possibilities of the medium painting, while the artist develops a strong personal universe. André Butzer initially created expressive pictures of intense colours, marked by an artificially exaggerated reality; then an increasing abstraction prevailed, occasionally interspersed with figurative elements, while some of his recent paintings, the N-Bilder, concentrate on the energetic force of an elaborated contrast of maximum pictorial means. Apparently laid down in series, these works moreover manifest their own status of being non-transferable determinations.

"Butzer’s latest pieces make abundantly clear, the object of his practice has never been to defang the power of painting. The very opposite is true. In the newest series we see that the line has finally transformed from the explosive chicken-scratch of some of the earlier works to the resonant, fully active fields that now swell and tilt before our eyes with an internal energy that feels real in the kind of way only a successful abstraction can deliver. We may never have seen these paintings before, but it feels as though we have, or, at least, as though we should have. For my part, I have always believed that you know you have done something good when it looks like it has always been around, like it is so obvious you wonder why nobody ever thought of it before."

Daniel Mendel-Black, Mature Works in André Butzer, Galerie Max Hetzler, 2013