It was from this perspective that we approached the work of Joachim Böttcher, who studied painting and graphic art in Dresden under Herbert Kunze and Gerhard Kettner and, in Berlin – following his time as a master student of Werner Stötzer – created an original body of sculptural work.
“Joachim Böttcher’s work revolves around a theme that is as complex as it is archaic, as inexhaustible as it is fundamental. It concerns the tectonics of the image and its relationship to the tectonics of nature – both animate and inorganic. One could also describe this the other way round: it concerns the observation of nature and the invention of a form that does not replicate its organisation, let alone represent it, but rather recreates its principles in three-dimensional and two-dimensional structures. Sculpture, painting, collage, drawing and printmaking are the media of this work; the economy of the essential determines its internal logic as well as the material. It guards against stylisation just as much as against frenzied artificiality. Böttcher’s works do not narrate, yet neither are they meditative. Somehow they seem unaware of the distinction between nature and culture, even though they belong entirely to the realm of art.’
— MATTHIAS FLÜGGE — in the exhibition catalogue
