Wolfgang Betke is a painter, poet, and performance artist known for detailed and highly textured images that render visible processes of construction and deconstruction.
Read MoreBorn in Düsseldorf, Betke studied Philosophy and Art History at the University of Hamburg. He then went on to study at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, where he took classes by Franz Erhard Walther, known for reconceptualising the image into sculpture and performance.
Layered, and revised, Wolfgang Betke's paintings consist of abstract landscapes and faces, however the focus of his rich compositions is the process and physicality of painting itself.
Betke will often scrape, scratch, smear, or corrode the canvas to revise or cover layers. As paint builds up or the canvas is teared, the space occupied by the image expands beyond the two-dimensional plane.
Such revisions can be noted in his early paper works of modified magazine images, which include an untitled portrait from 2012 that depicts a man with his face scraped off, while the upper left corner of the image is missing.
Expanding into literal space, the 2013 installation Paravent / Installationsansicht shows an aluminium folding screen painted and scribbled with permanent marker, depicting an abstracted landscape of scratched marks.
Its 2014 version, Paravent, is a free-standing two-panel sculpture painted with gestural strokes that depicts spiritual motifs alluding to re-birth and creation, while the 2015 Paravent appears as a four-panel folding aluminium screen decorated with bright flowers.
Betke's works materialise creations on their own terms across mixed-media compositions. Portraits like Stand Humanismus (2015) or Mann (2016) contend with existential dilemmas as a physical problem, with outlines of faces and fading visages punctuated by swathes of colour, where artmaking becomes the solution to the void of existence.
Later paintings like Lao Tse Werden (2021), in which one might imagine the ancient Chinese philosopher's head emerging from a floral landscape, reflects the tensions between following existing pathways, as the founder of Daoism would advocate, or pursuing one's own; the final painting finds resolution in the contention that one may do both.
Mythological and religious undertones equally appear in paintings like Time of the monsters (2019–2010) and Rotten subjects will not prevail (2018). The first is a sea-bound odyssey of sorts, in which the artist's sanded surfaces are visible, evoking layers of time and a process of working backwards within the painting's timeline.
Wolfgang Betke's works have shown widely in Europe, North America, and the U.K.
Solo exhibitions have been held at SETAREH, Düsseldorf (2022, 2018); Schüller, Germany (2020); Nicole Gnesa, Munich (2015); Galerie Thomas Flor, Düsseldorf (2009, 2007); and Galerie Lukas & Hoffmann, Cologne (1998).
He has been included in group exhibitions at Galerie der Künstler, Munich (2020); 56 Henry, New York (2019); Kienzle Art Foundation, Berlin (2016); Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin (2015); Ballhaus Ost, Berlin (2015, 2014); Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2013); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Warsaw (2011); Stadtmuseum Jena, Germany (2004); and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany (1997).
Wolfgang Betke''s website can be found here, and his Instagram here.
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2022
