b. 1958, based in Berlin, DE

Wolfgang Betke's pictures emerge in lengthy work processes from the art of painting itself. Where this traditionally ends, the artist seizes the canvas with sometimes ruthless means; scraping, scratching, smearing or corroding the canvas to revise, uncover or paint over previously created layers.
Betke sometimes goes so far in this process of creation and destruction, construction and deconstruction, that he creates holes in the canvas, thereby breaking the limits of the image’s actual space. His colourful works show the conditions and processes of creation of the medium of painting; the application and removal of paint on the canvas as well as the duration of its genesis. Betke‘s paintings name what they are - a distinct bodily “language“ that makes both the outer and the inner world tangible. The latter draws from the memory of the body as well as from a world of thought based on intensive examination of philosophical questions.