LONDON.- In January 2016 two new books will be published on Hamburg-based artist Werner Büttner by Black Dog Publishing in collaboration with Marlborough Contemporary, London. Coincidence in Splendour and My Looting Eye are the first substantial books on Büttner's practice in English rather than German.

Coincidence in Splendour
From his beginnings as a renegade former law student turned painter, Werner Büttner has had a sustained and provocative impact on the European art scene over the course of the last 35 years. Together with his associates Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen in the Neue Wilde, Büttner developed an anti-academic style that celebrates subjects of deliberate ordinariness or frivolous whimsy—a critical reaction against the new monumental, ponderous figuration of the 1980s. Influenced by extensive readings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century anti-authoritarian authors such as Montaigne and Rabelais, combined with his gift for sharp observation, humour and caustic wit, Büttner’s painted oeuvre is one of rich fantasy and surprising invention, quite unlike that of any of his contemporaries in Germany today.

Coincidence in Splendor is beautifully illustrated with colour images of Büttner’s paintings from the 1980s to the present day, that document a restless and provocative practice.

My Looting Eye
In the early 2000s, Werner Büttner turned to collage in earnest. Working within the confines of a uniform size, he reformed a direct relationship with a medium that had long informed his painting practice, and with the early twentieth century techniques of artists such as Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters. While Büttner uses collages as the starting point for some of his paintings, the former are not only preparatory studies but a strategy that enables juxtaposing realities and unexpected associations—major characteristics of his extensive oeuvre. In this combination of the everyday and the commonplace, a sceptical perspective becomes manifest as a critical method. With cutting wit, Büttner breaks the spell of daily social events and renders their values relative and benign.

Lavishly illustrated with images of Büttner’s singular collage practice, My Looting Eye features contributions from art historians and writers Daria Mille, Andrew Renton and Gilda Williams.