05/08/2026
Great profile of Michael Bühler-Rose in Artnet today, along with the brilliant Nick Doyle and Alison Elizabeth Taylor. Do not miss his new work at the Independent. Thank you, Cabelle Ahn. Link in bio.
Bühler-Rose combines traditional intarsia with contemporary still lifes to explore how “layers of aura” infiltrate images, particularly images of artworks. Informed by his training in conceptual photography under Max Becher and Andrea Robbins [son and daughter-in-law of Bernd and Hilla Becher], his current process begins with a Photoshop composite that is then translated into wood in collaboration with Mysorean artisans. The works reveal the surprising polychrome palette of different natural woods, from saturated yellows and reds to gradations of blues and violets.
For Bühler-Rose, the “weight and veracity” of wood and the slowness of the intarsia process counteract photography’s reproducibility. “Photographs are basically chemical disasters under glass waiting to happen,” said Bühler-Rose, who will additionally have a solo show at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton (opening July 18). By contrast, he added, the deliberateness of the intarsia process transforms the scene into “an intentional meditation on these objects.” As Benjamin Tischer, the adviser and founder of New Discretions, put it: “[Michael’s] imagery is what people are initially drawn to. But there is this sense of wonder once they realize they are seeing only raw wood.”
