START POINT PRIZE – Prize for emerging artists

The paintings of Jan Kilian Böttcher are a playful attempt at “traditional” images, with an awareness of their own exaggeration and vanity, returning (often as parody) to postwar neo-realism in terms of their ambiguous sense of engagement, ironically transplanted into the current situation of post-communist Germany. Allusions to classical mythological themes are interspersed with Communist ideology and punk earthiness, only to finally reveal the comics-derived basis of the cycle, with the last image hidden behind the heating unit next to the fire extinguisher. It is a painting that possesses a quality of directness, not as an autotelic attempt, but as a confident and entertaining narrative. (pv)