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Candide‘s Garden

Wolfgang Betke
25.10.2024 – 18.01.2025

Schöneberger Ufer 71
10785 Berlin
Wolfgang Betke‘s vibrant paintings and sculpture foreground the conditions and processes of creation through the medium of paint; the lengthly application and removal of paint on the canvas becomes a cipher to reveal the duration of its genesis. Betke describes these painted objects as traces of a pronounced ‘bodily automatism’. This neologism is a continuation of the surrealist terms ‘lyrical automatism’ or ‘psychic automatism’.
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Die beste aller möglichen Welten
2024

Painted aluminium
270 x 250 cm | 106 1/3 x 98 1/2 in
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Die beste aller möglichen Welten, 2024
Painted aluminium
270 x 250 cm | 106 1/3 x 98 1/2 in
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Knowledge,
2023

Acrylic, ink, oil on aluminium
148.8 x 125.2 cm | 58 2/3 x 49 1/3 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Knowledge,
2023
Acrylic, ink, oil on aluminium
148.8 x 125.2 cm | 58 2/3 x 49 1/3 in
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Muriburiland,
2023

Oil, ink, spray-paint on aluminium
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke, Muriburiland,
2023
Oil, ink, spray-paint on aluminium
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Levitation, kind of...,
2024

Oil, ink, spray-paint on aluminium
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Levitation, kind of...,
2024
Oil, ink, spray-paint on aluminium
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Untitled,
2024

Painted canvas
240 x 200 cm | 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Untitled,
2024
Painted canvas
240 x 200 cm | 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 in
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The exhibition Candide’s Garden derives its title from the final lines of Voltaires novel, where after a horrendous sequences of events the hero takes advice from a valiant old man who explains that everybody should tend to their own garden. This seemingly idealistic platitude is in response to the optimism which Voltaire sought to critique in the writing of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a thinker who believed that since this is the only apparent world that it must be the best of all possible worlds. This phrase is taken up sarcastically through out the book to illuminate that politics, religion, and social hierarchies are all human constructions and not entirely ‘God’s will’. Betke takes this notion up as reflective of his own artistic research.
Das wird schon/That will be fine,
2024

Painted aluminium
270 x 375 cm | 106 1/3 x 147 2/3 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Das wird schon/That will be fine,
2024
Painted aluminium
270 x 375 cm | 106 1/3 x 147 2/3 in
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Gargoyle,
2024

Oil, acrylic on aluminium
270 x 250 cm | 106 1/3 x 98 1/2 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Gargoyle,
2024
Oil, acrylic on aluminium 270 x 250 cm | 106 1/3 x 98 1/2 in
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The Gardener,
2024

Cut out aluminium collage on MDF, acrylic and oil paint
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
The Gardener,
2024
Cut out aluminium collage on MDF, acrylic and oil paint
150 x 125 cm | 59 x 49 1/4 in
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Nr.1 to Nr.7
2017-2024

MDF, metal, painted, wood, record, textile, and metal stand
169 x 230 cm | 66 1/2 x 90 1/2 in (varies by piece)
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Wolfgang Betke
Nr.1 to Nr.7
2017-2024
MDF, metal, painted, wood, record, textile, and metal stand
169 x 230 cm | 66 1/2 x 90 1/2 in (varies by piece)
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In drawing from the memory of the body, his process is a contemplative one and regularly engages a world of speculative thought based on intensive examination of philosophical questions. ‘Initially, my painting is not a language, but a pure material setting. Material traces of bodily gestures only become language when they are associatively charged with meaning or turn into the figurative. In my paintings, we watch language emerge.’ And so, realising incredibly rich fields of colourful and imaginative mark making, which immerse the viewer in their sensuous depths, is but one aspect of Wolfgang Betke’s art. For him, the work is as much dedication to the process of thinking through this creative activity as much as it is a deeply aesthetic form of production. Influenced by his own philosophically rich world view, which engages the ancient and the contemporary in equal measure, he works to express these contemplations through the act of making pictures. Yet to call them pictures is to undo the complexly layered results of his process. In fact the works achievement may be the building up and undoing of images, the artist both plotting experiences and obfuscating their delineations, realising them as densely felt temporalities. Like Voltaire, he holds up both shadow and light to reveal the entropic conditions of Modernism.
Abwehrzauber,
2020-2024

Ink, acrylic, oil on aluminium
149.3 x 125 cm | 58 3/4 x 49 1/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke, Abwehrzauber,
2020-2024
Ink, acrylic, oil on aluminium
149.3 x 125 cm | 58 3/4 x 49 1/4 in
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The real Sophie cultivates the loss of face,
2023

Oil, acrylic, textile and paper collageon cut out MDF
130.5 x 100 cm | 51 1/3 x 39 1/3 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
The real Sophie cultivates the loss of face,
2023
Oil, acrylic, textile and paper collage
on cut out MDF
130.5 x 100 cm | 51 1/3 x 39 1/3 in
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Optimist, 2024

Paint on folded aluminium
100 x 80 cm | 39 1/3 x 31 1/2 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Optimist,
2024
Paint on folded aluminium
100 x 80 cm | 39 1/3 x 31 1/2 in
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Entsetzen und Gelassenheit,
2024

Oil, acrylic, spray paint on canvas,208 x 200 cm | 81.8 x 78.7 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Entsetzen und Gelassenheit, 2024
‍Oil, acrylic, spray paint on canvas,
208 x 200 cm | 81.8 x 78.7 in
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Betke’s pictures celebrate the beauty of life even amongst the detritus of our ravaged landscape. We see figures in the work, silhouettes appearing and dissolving, cities rising only to crumble. We catch glimpses of art historical resonances, the past repeating in the present, lessons to be remembered. But the magic of this process is that we may learn from these paintings to hope. Not the received optimism of Leibniz, but to plot our own path through consequence and find the inner enchantment of realising our own garden.
Hermit's delight, 2019-2024

Painted canvas
240 x 200 cm | 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Hermit's delight,
2019-2024
Painted canvas
240 x 200 cm | 94 1/2 x 78 3/4 in
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Insight,
2024

Painted and perforated aluminium60 x 50 cm | 23 2/3 x 19 2/3 in
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Wolfgang Betke,
Insight,
2024
Painted and perforated aluminium
60 x 50 cm | 23 2/3 x 19 2/3 in
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