Michael Bauer
Bulls LS was acquired at Frieze London in 2014 from Alison Jacques Gallery, who represented Bauer. The painting exemplifies what makes Bauer's large scale work so compelling: the canvas operates simultaneously as a battlefield and a playground, with amorphic figurative forms dissolving and re-emerging through layered washes, incised line, impasto, and pointillist passages. The monumental scale , six by five feet, allows the accumulation of Bauer's eclectic visual sources to achieve something genuinely vertiginous: Surrealism, Cubism, Pop, and German Neo-Expressionism are all present, yet none dominates. The looming green mass at the composition's center, flanked by architectural fragments rendered in flat gray, gives the painting a gravitational pull that smaller works rarely achieve. Bauer is the subject of a monograph published by JRP Ringier with a lead essay by Jennifer Higgie, and his work is held in the Saatchi Collection and the Zabludowicz Collection, London.
Provenance
Alison Jacques Gallery, London. Frieze Art Fair, London, 2014 Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibitions
Butter Bebop (Transatlantic Creme Dreams)
Alison Jacques Gallery, London, 2015
Creme Wars – Snoopie
Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York, 2014
Slow Future – H.S.O.P. – Opus
Alison Jacques Gallery, London, 2013
K-Hole (Frogs)
Villa Merkel, Esslingen am Neckar, 2011
Anthem
Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, 2009