In 2003, the painter André Butzer opened his first exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin under the title Chips and Pepsi and Medicine. It was the time of his artistic breakthrough, and in the following 20 years he has shown works at the gallery’s different venues in a total of 17 solo and 10 group exhibitions, some of which he initiated himself. This book documents all of these events with installation views and large-format images of all works, accompanied by contemporary texts from the catalogs, reviews, and press releases to each show. In this context, the development of different work groups becomes especially obvious. Butzer starts out with a cosmos of idiosyncratic protagonists who occupy the picture space like a stage with a backdrop of abstract painting. They refer to life in 1980s West Germany, where the artist grew up, with friends and family figures, references to the cultural hegemony of the US, and personal heroes such as Hölderlin, Disney, or God above. Butzer also creates purely abstract series with complex grids of colorful lines or minimalist gray or black color fields, composed with the same loose vibrancy as the figurative pictures. In all these work groups, the artist is concerned with the means of painting, and so he finds new freedom even in restriction: “Repetition is a topic I have to follow, but I never repeat in this repetition.”

“I am trying to think about the paintings with as little intention as possible. I follow the light. I trace its shine with the eyes, watch myself seeing and grasp the depth of space as darkness in the light. I measure the forces in the landscape and experience the former natural space as fate, as well as sadness revealing itself and as pain. I feel the wind as the strong force of edification, mourning and recurrence.” —André Butzer

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In collaboration with Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London