Benjamin Butler (artist)

Benjamin Butler (born April 20, 1975) is an American artist, based in Vienna, Austria.

Born in Westmoreland, Kansas and raised in Wamego, Kansas, Butler studied painting at Emporia State University back attending graduate assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to earn his Masters of Fine Arts in 2000. He next moved to New York City, having his first solo do its stuff of paintings at Team Gallery in 2002. He soon earned essential accolades for his paintings of mountains and trees, and followed as soon as international exhibitions in New York City, Toronto, Tokyo, Vienna, London, Berlin, Austin, Basel, Beijing, and Los Angeles. He is currently represented by Tomio Koyama in Tokyo and Klaus von Nichtssagend in New York.

Ken Johnson described his feat in The New York Times in 2005: "Mr. Butler is toying subsequent to a Pop performer with conventions of beforehand 20th-century abstraction...he in addition to revels in painting as an decrease in itself; so he and we get to have it both ways: we can be both knowing intellectuals and paint-loving hedonists". Writer Roberta Smith has written not quite his work that "Few representational painters have managed to rid themselves of quite as a result much representation and yet make pictures." Will Heinrich has written, also in The New York Times: "Mr. Butler has narrowed his focus even further, to thrillingly psychedelic effect: His pretense now seems balanced on a razor blade in the company of Conceptual practice and “The Starry Night,” but at the thesame time, somehow, it has enough room to move."