Nino Mier Gallery is intrigued to announce a solo exhibition by German-born André Butzer through April 29, 2023, at Nino Mier’s new location at 62 Crosby St in SoHo.

 

With the full artistic experience of 30 years, André Butzer has created six new paintings of one of his most distinctive characters—the figure of the Woman. Post-N, succeeding the truth and revelations of his N- Paintings (2010–2017), she is a being on the brink of this world and the beyond. She embodies the complete realization of light, color and space, as painterly light is always bright and dark at the same moment. Whether one- or many-colored, the towering bodies and the surrounding spaces are enveloped by the very same agitation. Hues and contrasts, strokes and planes are interwoven, highly concentrated and solidified. Every layer, block or patch of color is in total coherence with the directions of the canvas. Every vertical claim is followed by a horizontal riposte, mutually upholding one another and thereby bringing forth the delicate balance of the painterly whole.

Everything resonates almost natural-like—as a true fond or foundation of existence. There are no empty, merely contemporary and marionette-like gestures but a humble and most fundamental being-there. In stark contrast to their ostensible seriality, each Woman is a soulful individual with a unique temperament. If the canvas is the place of color and color is the place of appearance, in their calm and exalted simplicity, they are in and out of themselves, which is the source of any stance.

Thus, painting is unconcealment. Static, yet life-imbued. Virtually like living matter, in an extremely tense state of vulnerable powerlessness and vigorous force. The Women, modest and benevolent, might as well be icons of the Virgin Mary, veils or even shrouds—just think of Veronica. Butzer’s paintings are the animated fabric of life and death, re-uniting what is present and what is absent: Imprints of death and traces of the living. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue.

André Butzer was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1973 and lives in Berlin-Wannsee.