Michael Bauer
02 Sep - 29 Oct 2011
MICHAEL BAUER
The summer I started collecting knives
2 September - 29 October 29, 2011
The exhibition The summer I started collecting knives is Michael Bauer’s second single exhibition at Galerie Peter Kilchmann. In his paintings and drawings, the artist goes beyond traditional visual narratives. The gallery proudly presents several works on paper as well as a new large-format painting and a recent sculpture.
Michael Bauer was born in 1973 in Erkelenz, Germany. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig and lives in Berlin and New York. In his work Michael Bauer mixes components of the real world with phantasm. Image space is insinuated and destroyed at the same time when Michael Bauer creates worlds on paper and unprimed canvas with thick streaks of oil paint and resolute lines of charcoal.
Layers of color and resins become detailed figures and geometric planes, while glued-on photos and paper snippets bring out the flatness of the images. The cryptic titles of the works suggest other meanings, and allow for a whole new array of interpretations. These are in the best possible way disorderly worlds, which Michael Bauer presents to us. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would be delighted. In 1977 the two described an organizational model, which they titled Rhizome: “Any point of a rhizome, can be connected to anything other, (...) it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification.” This is also true of Michael Bauer’s approach to art.
Without hesitation he takes different subcultures and connects early anarchic Punk and Hardcore elements. It is fitting that Michael Bauer designed two posters for the exhibition, which are displayed next to the painting and drawing with noticeable naturalness. Despite the effortlessness with which Michael Bauer incorporates found image material into his work, his main focus remains on the painting and drawing in all its intensity. That, which Deleuze and Guattari declared concerning books, can freely be translated to mean Michael Bauer’s pictures: “Find the parts in a picture which you can relate to. We no longer read and write in a traditional sense. There is no death of a picture, but rather a new way of reading. There is nothing to understand about a picture, but many things that can be used. (...) The combinations, permutations and instructions are never immanent in a picture. Rather, everything depends on external relationships. So yes, take what you like.”
This year, the artist had the solo exhibition K-Hole (Frogs) at Villa Merkel, Esslingen, to which a catalog is being published. At the same time the artist acted as curator, putting together a show in which contemporary artists were exhibited alongside so-called outsider art. Already earlier Michael Bauer invited other artists to exhibit within the context of a group show. This year the Norma Mangione Gallery in Turin, staged an exhibition by Michael Bauer. Worth mentioning is also Michael Bauer’s solo exhibition Anthem at Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz, 2009. He has also been involved in several group shows, such as The Cannibal’s Muse II, Autocenter, Berlin, 2011; PPP – Public Private Paintings, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, 2010; Die andere Seite, KAI 10, Raum für Kunst, Düsseldorf, 2009; Faster Bigger Better, ZKM, Karlsruhe, (Sammlung Boros), 2006.
The summer I started collecting knives
2 September - 29 October 29, 2011
The exhibition The summer I started collecting knives is Michael Bauer’s second single exhibition at Galerie Peter Kilchmann. In his paintings and drawings, the artist goes beyond traditional visual narratives. The gallery proudly presents several works on paper as well as a new large-format painting and a recent sculpture.
Michael Bauer was born in 1973 in Erkelenz, Germany. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig and lives in Berlin and New York. In his work Michael Bauer mixes components of the real world with phantasm. Image space is insinuated and destroyed at the same time when Michael Bauer creates worlds on paper and unprimed canvas with thick streaks of oil paint and resolute lines of charcoal.
Layers of color and resins become detailed figures and geometric planes, while glued-on photos and paper snippets bring out the flatness of the images. The cryptic titles of the works suggest other meanings, and allow for a whole new array of interpretations. These are in the best possible way disorderly worlds, which Michael Bauer presents to us. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would be delighted. In 1977 the two described an organizational model, which they titled Rhizome: “Any point of a rhizome, can be connected to anything other, (...) it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification.” This is also true of Michael Bauer’s approach to art.
Without hesitation he takes different subcultures and connects early anarchic Punk and Hardcore elements. It is fitting that Michael Bauer designed two posters for the exhibition, which are displayed next to the painting and drawing with noticeable naturalness. Despite the effortlessness with which Michael Bauer incorporates found image material into his work, his main focus remains on the painting and drawing in all its intensity. That, which Deleuze and Guattari declared concerning books, can freely be translated to mean Michael Bauer’s pictures: “Find the parts in a picture which you can relate to. We no longer read and write in a traditional sense. There is no death of a picture, but rather a new way of reading. There is nothing to understand about a picture, but many things that can be used. (...) The combinations, permutations and instructions are never immanent in a picture. Rather, everything depends on external relationships. So yes, take what you like.”
This year, the artist had the solo exhibition K-Hole (Frogs) at Villa Merkel, Esslingen, to which a catalog is being published. At the same time the artist acted as curator, putting together a show in which contemporary artists were exhibited alongside so-called outsider art. Already earlier Michael Bauer invited other artists to exhibit within the context of a group show. This year the Norma Mangione Gallery in Turin, staged an exhibition by Michael Bauer. Worth mentioning is also Michael Bauer’s solo exhibition Anthem at Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz, 2009. He has also been involved in several group shows, such as The Cannibal’s Muse II, Autocenter, Berlin, 2011; PPP – Public Private Paintings, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, 2010; Die andere Seite, KAI 10, Raum für Kunst, Düsseldorf, 2009; Faster Bigger Better, ZKM, Karlsruhe, (Sammlung Boros), 2006.