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Werner
Büttner: Thomas Groetz (ed.) German out of print |
It struck like a bolt of lightning and passed by us with roaring thunder: today, the art of the eighties continues to offer crucial stimuli for an ironic and critically revised approach to the sacred cows of contemporary culture. The trio infernale of Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Werner Büttner, omnipresent provocateurs at all prominent art events, had evolved a strategy that celebrated the conscious infringement of rules: painting was back again—but now as “bad painting”, as a deliberate assault on the exalted ideals of “high” art. Arguably the most romantic of the three, Werner Büttner (*1954 in Jena) devoted himself as much to political issues (Schrecken der Demokratie; Die ganze Welt drängt an den Stammtisch) as he did to infiltrating art with the trivia of everyday life (Selbst bei ‘Ich könnt’ im Bett verfaulen’). Büttner works with bitingly provocative humour, wielding it to override the morals of his stories and their historical and philosophical implications that he takes to their polemical extreme. “There is plenty to puzzle over and decipher. Or maybe not.” (Wolf Jahn) Quite what potential is still harboured by this self-ironic art can be discovered in our newly published catalogue which takes a contemporary look at the work of Werner Büttner. The book completes the series on the work of this trio of artists in the 1980s that also includes our publication of Gitarren, die nicht Gudrun heißen. Homage to Martin Kippenberger in spring 2003, and of Albert Oehlen: Gemälde Paintings 1980–1982, published in autumn 2002.
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