Matthias Bitzer (Marianne Boesky Gallery)

In a revisionist reassessment of classic modernism Matthias Bitzer (b. Stuttgart 1975 lives and works in Berlin) combines portraiture with geometric construction often drawing on the formal vocabulary plots and intellectual history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His work in media such as painting sculpture drawing collage and site-specific installation art speaks a characteristic symbolic language. Interweaving the lives of prominent figures like Arthur Schnitzler Emily Dickinson Fernando Pessoa Jorge Luis Borges Anita Berber and Leopoldo Fregoli with his own b iographical experience and contemporary life Bitzer creates dense narrative fabrics that accommodate the viewer's abstract-figurative associations. The book documents the evolution of Bitzer's conceptions of time-space through four of his most representative solo exhibitions to date. Individual catalogue sections illustrate the shows Anatol Echo at Almine Rech Paris Amherst Ether Fields at Francesca Minini Milan Saturnine Swing at Marianne Boesky New York and The Collapse of Features at KadelWillborn Düsseldorf. Essays by Roland Nachtigäller Timotheus Vermeulen Ursula Ströbele and Augusta Gordon Joyce as well as sketches photographs poems and references compiled by the artist round out this survey of Matthias Bitzer's extensive oeuvre.