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 biographical 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.
