ANDRÉ BUTZER: FRAU AM TISCH MIT FRÜCHTEN

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present Frau am Tisch mit Früchten, André Butzer’s third solo exhibition with the Paris gallery.

March 1 – April 5, 2025

André Butzer envisions things astutely and in earnest with shocking clarity: table, fruit, woman. In four monumental paintings, created for the main hall of the gallery, he intertwines them in a planarly whole: “Frau am Tisch mit Früchten (1–4)”, 2024–2025. With each painting, Butzer leads us onto the same threshold. A red plane, hemmed in by the white of the canvas, opens up an enormous interior space within the image. The abundant red hue does not only constitute the surrounding ambient colour, it is the site of the painting itself. Butzer merges all spatial properties in total flatness. The entire image is a colour field, a room, a wall, a floor, a tableau, a table and even a tablecloth.

With light and transparent strokes, Butzer lets the plane sway into the depths. The image sways in the plane and in the depths of the chromatic expanse, being both flat and infinitely deep. Closeness and distance, plane and space, ground and figure are inextricably connected. Palpably withdrawn, yet equally close and tangible. Painterly, this is felt so simply and so vastly that each image can unite these opposites within itself. The red is radiant and agitated, yet it is repeatedly traversed by fine horizontal and vertical seams and joints – the fundamental orientations of the pictorial fabric. Along these axes or hinges, the picture plans join together like wall panels, planks and floorboards.

Butzer places a dark purple block directly into the red or, in “Frau am Tisch mit Früchten (3)”, a slightly truncated light blue round. Sparse furnishings. On and around these “tables” or on the table-like images are bright, probably Mediterranean fruits: peaches, oranges, apples and lemons. Laid out and scattered, descending and ascending, floating about – but always firmly in their own place. And above it all, a single woman’s head appears, embedded and set in red like a medallion on a wall.

None of these interiors have a clear centre. The forms, planes, things and figures are placed asymmetrically, standing out from each other as if cut out with scissors. Only in his masterful command of the elementarily relational nature of the primary colours red, yellow, blue, of flesh colour as the embodiment of human presence, and of a few complementary contrasts, does Butzer achieve a colouristic solidity that gives the image a secure hold.