Michael Bauch
(*1951 in Wiesbaden, lives and works in Hamburg) studied until 1978 at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Academy of the Arts) in Hamburg. His career began in the early 1980s, when the so-called Neue Wilden was the current art movement in German speaking Europe. Michael Bauch though had reservations towards this expressive-figurative movement as his interest leant towards conceptual painting.
His work convinces through the concentration of its means: it is self-confident and self-evident and bears in its sharply defined formal specifications a sensual moment. The artist indicates that there is no narration or figuration at the beginning of his work, but a clear constructive dissection of the picture plane through skilled manual work procedures. In his analytical art Michael Bauch deals with the question of what a painting is. Each painterly mark on a plain canvas evokes a spatial impact, which he often accentuates and picks out as a central theme, by physically intervening directly into the canvas, cutting, piercing and folding it; as well as by varying the flow of the paint and the characteristics of the paint-brush. His paintings evoke very different moods ranging from sombre heaviness to exhilarating lightness, unfolding these effects in particular through his intelligent use of colours. Michael Bauch follows in the creation of his works a peculiarity: He defines the decisive colours just before the end of the painting process and introduces them into specified space. The balance of colours is pivotal to this approach, which results in daring, but nevertheless harmonious colour combinations.