Werner BüttnerUndichte Schlüssellöcher

Has Werner Büttner’s world of images become funnier, more colourful? Or should one, following Kristian Vistrup Madsen’s observations, consider it as consistently bleak and oppressive as ever? The latter certainly applies to a work such as “Brüder (Kain + Abel)” of 1983, but no longer quite so exclusively to the most recently created works. Here a good measure of ironic melancholy and caustic mockery is mixed into the bitter no-future chant of the protagonists of the 1980s. The use of the palette has changed as well: the earthy tone gives way to a certain signal quality, without the family ties to the earlier works being renounced. But what led to such a melancholy softening of the world view? Is it a general consequence of growing older? Or does it rest on the more specific awareness of now being too old oneself for that former refusal to become like the old (in the 1980s)? Or does everything have the rather simpler ground of the insight “Everything is soluble in alcohol!“, as Rainald Goetz has his protagonist Raspe say in his 1983 novel “Irre”? Incidentally, he added a reflection that mangles together Nietzsche (“Become who you are”) and an advertising slogan of the day (“ou may stay just as you are!”): “I do not want to become what I am!” At that a light goes on, one that Kristian Vistrup Madsen of course also sees shining: self-knowledge outshines everything, yet it can hardly prevent madness and confusion from continuing to play their little game with us.

Exhibition:
Contemporary Fine Arts CFA Berlin, 30/7 – 29/8/2020