Andre Butzer & Wolfgang Voegele Duo Show 2019

Duo show Wolfgang Voegele & Andre Butzer June 21st. – August 20th. 2019

EXHIBITION IMAGES | ANDRE BUTZER – SINGLE SHOTS | WOLFGANG VOEGELE – SINGLE SHOTS | TEXT

The work of Wolfgang Voegele (b. 1983) and André Butzer (b. 1973) underlines what seem to be pivotal for both artists practices; finding new ways in order to utilise the vast variety of two- and three-dimensional artistic and curatorial aids that can enable each artists to construct deeply original bodies of work. The work thus emanates from reoccurring studies of the potential of the wide and diverse modes of non-figurative painting and sculpture, ranging from the formal language of paint, colour, scale or placement.

Both artists play with the surfaces of the canvasses, tactility of paint and the expectations that paintings and sculptures allude to historically. In doing so both artists’ aim to invigorate the abstract representation. In Voegele’s work this inherent need for the abstract shapes and forms to rise and penetrate the canvas’ two-dimensional space has furthermore concluded in a series of sculptures hanging from the ceiling and rising from the floor challenging the visitors expectations.

What might seem as an incidental juxtaposition at first essentially conveys a thorough dialogue in which Voegele and Butzer have exchanged perspectives on art and life. This underlying familiarity between the two artists discloses itself as soon as you enter the exhibition. A fundamental sense of how the two artists informs and guides each other practises as well as how they share a mutual understanding of art is sensed immediately and makes this exhibition more than just detached chapters of epic novels seemingly appearing out of context and instead it invites the audience to explore the points of convergence and conjunction in-between the series of works.

The careful selection of works from both artists recent production in this exhibition simultaneously presents the two artists individual understated and delicate use of a non- figurative visual resonance sustained in-between a series of organic shapes and intuitive brush strokes, as well as the exhibition accentuates Voegele and Butzer’s shared unpretentious approach to art history, making the exhibition a sensitive examination of contemporary abstract art as well as a unique glimpse into two artistic practices.

Cecilie Marie Dalhoff, art historian