Andre Butzer at Max Hetzler - Berlin

For his first show with Max Hetzler, Andre Butzer presented eight large oil paintings in the main gallery, plus a selection of watercolors and drawings in another room. The disparity between the two spaces was marked. Entering the first gallery meant being almost overwhelmed by the size, color and smell of the paintings; the watercolors and drawings in the back were thin and flat by comparison.

Seven of the paintings measure 8 feet 2 inches by 6 1/2 feet and depict a single figure. Woman (2002), for example, presents a character with a skull-like head, black circles for eyes, and a simple curve for a smile. Her big black hairdo plays against a magenta background. She resembles a royal Egyptian mummy whose face didn't survive as well as her wig. She raises an orange stump of an arm in jovial greeting.

The eighth, Chips and Pepsi and Medicine (2003), after which the show was named, is huge at 9 3/4 by 14 1/2 feet, and contains seven grotesquely childlike figures, smiling and waving as if assembled for a celebration. The heavily applied reds, blues, yellows and greens, smeared and dripped across the canvas, create forms that melt into one another. Often, it is only possible to distinguish one character from the next by the change in color. To get an idea of the impact of this picture, imagine a hybrid of de Kooning's iconic "Woman" paintings and any of Ensor's threateningly comic "skeleton" images re-created without the complexity of line and form. Subtitled Happiness, this was the most exuberant work in the exhibition. In it, Halloween pranksters, carnival dancers and aliens seem to pose for the kind of high-spirited group portrait that has everyone mugging for the camera.

The scant attention to formal technicalities gives many of Butzer's canvases the look of having been produced during an art-therapy session. But despite the apparent anarchic disregard for composition or technique, the images have their own pictorial vocabulary. The bizarre figures assume a twisted credibility in reference to one another. The drawings and watercolors do not have the force of the large canvases. Butzer's subjects need size, color and thick paint to achieve their power.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group