7 May – 28 August, 2022
Taking Lucca Signorelli’s allegory Vivant portant le Mort, 1500—a living body carrying a carcass on his shoulders—, Butzer finds a parable for human existence. From the elementary relation between the horizontal and the vertical, he creates a pictorial figure that inevitably reveals the finiteness as well as the possibilities of being. In imageless immediacy, each of them is unique, unrepeatable, individual. An individual that unexpectedly and ever anew challenges us to question our wavering stand in the world.
From the beginning of his practice, Butzer has painterly questioned the assaulted existence of man and still struggles with it. The gesture of his hand inscribes itself into the gesture of the paintings.
»These ›figures‹ [...] were always abstract, already at the very beginning. They symbolized the path from an initially unknown end point to the actual beginning«.
As abruptly as figuration, pastosity and all colors are withdrawn and kept within, the image as image nonetheless persists.
A thoughtfully related constellation, in which the simple togetherness of these four paintings gives a glimpse of the breadth and wholesomeness André Butzer’s painterly horizon of experience encompasses.
