ART CITIES:Athens-Michael Bühler Rose

Michael Bühler-Rose explores how collections can reveal one’s inner life or biography. His approach is informed by the Gubbio Studiolo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance wood intarsia. The studiolo, a room for study or contemplation, contains physical and representational symbols of knowledge. Bühler-Rose reinterprets this tradition, combining objects both obtained and aspirational to expose the proto-Photoshop fiction inherent in Renaissance illusionism. His works collapse the boundaries between personal and cultural history, merging his upbringing within the Hare Krishna movement and the punk/hardcore music scenes with the devotional practices of orthodox Hindu/Vaishnava ritualism.

By Efi Michallarou
Photo: George Benias Gallery

Michael Bühler-Rose in his solo exhibition “Area” presents new wood marquetry works at George Benias Gallery in Athens. Drawing from his ongoing “Verso” series, Bühler-Rose engages in a dialogue with an influential circle of artists associated with 1980s New York City, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, Kenny Scharf, Nam June Paik, and Sol LeWitt.

The title of the exhibition comes from AREA, one of the most famous and influential nightclubs in New York City during the mid-1980s, which operated between 1983 and 1987. AREA was not just a place to dance; it was an ever-changing art space. Roughly every six weeks, the club completely transformed its interior around a brand-new theme. The creators built elaborate stage sets, installed artwork, hosted live performances, and decorated every corner to match the theme.

In May 1985, the club hosted a special six-week exhibition simply titled “ART”. To invite people to the show, photographer Michael Halsband took a famous group photo at the upscale restaurant Mr. Chow. The photograph gathered artists, art dealers, gallery owners, and friends from the AREA scene. In the picture, Jean-Michel Basquiat playfully stands at the front dressed as a waiter, surrounded by famous figures like Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, Kenny Scharf, Julian Schnabel, and art dealer Tony Shafrazi.

This single photograph captured something very important about that era. Instead of showing the art world as a list of famous individuals working alone, the picture showed it as a lively social community. It proved that the art world is made up of real human connections—friendships, dinners, nightclubs, galleries, and business deals working together.

Michael Bühler-Rose takes this famous art history and turns it upside down. Instead of recreating the famous images painted on the front of famous artworks, his “Verso” series recreates the backs of those paintings. When you look at the back of a painting, you usually see raw canvas, wooden support bars, hanging wires, picture frames, gallery labels, museum stamps, shipping stickers, and auction tags. Bühler-Rose recreates all of these details with incredible precision. The actual famous painting on the front remains completely hidden from view, while the physical history of the object and where it has traveled across the world become clearly visible.

These reverse views work as detailed biographies for the artworks. By looking closely at the back of a painting, you can trace its full life story through specific personal details. A piece inspired by Keith Haring reveals a sweet handwritten dedication to his grandparents on the back of the canvas. A work linked to Jean-Michel Basquiat displays his large, distinctive signature written on the wooden frame. Other pieces show gallery stickers from the Tony Shafrazi Gallery showing where the work was first sold, or a collection of official museum stamps, shipping labels, and customs stickers accumulated over decades of international travel on the back of a piece by Sol LeWitt.

Together, these details create a new kind of group portrait. It is a portrait made not from the faces of the artists, but from the physical objects, marks, and personal records left behind over time.

To recreate these detailed surfaces, Bühler-Rose uses a traditional woodworking technique called marquetry, or wood inlay. Marquetry is the art of fitting together tiny, custom-cut pieces of different woods to create a detailed picture, much like a complex jigsaw puzzle. Historically, marquetry was popular during the Italian Renaissance to decorate a studiolo, which was a private room where scholars and art lovers sat in quiet reflection surrounded by beautiful, detailed objects.

Bühler-Rose creates these artworks in close collaboration with skilled master craftspeople in Mysore, India. Absolutely no paint or dye is used in the creation of these works. Every single color, shadow, and subtle variation in tone comes strictly from the natural shades of different types of wood. Small elements like masking tape, metal staples, handwriting, raw canvas texture, and metal hanging hardware are all constructed entirely out of carefully shaped, interlocking pieces of natural wood.

When we look at a famous painting, we usually recognize the image instantly and move on. Bühler-Rose’s process deliberately slows us down. Because the famous painting is missing, we are forced to pause and think about the artist whose name appears on the label.

The back side of the painting, which is usually considered hidden or secondary, becomes the main event. It serves as an intimate personal archive showing how art moves through the world from an artist’s studio to a nightclub, into a gallery, across international borders, into museums, and through auction houses.

While the original AREA nightclub brought people together inside a physical space for a short time, Bühler-Rose’s wooden artworks reveal the long journeys that artworks take through human history. By reconstructing these hidden surfaces, he gives us a fresh way to look at art history that is understood not just through famous images, but through the physical objects, materials, and relationships that give them lasting meaning.

Photo: Michael Bühler-Rose, Verso (Nam June Paik, Untitled (Small Rosetta Stone-Channel 12) 1983), 2026, Wood Intarsia/Inlay: Satran, Paduk, Teak, Dark Champa and Tamarind Wood, 40 x 31.2 x 2.5 cm | 15.75 x 12.3 x 1 in, © Michael Bühler-Rose, Courtesy the artist and George Benias Gallery

Info: George Benias Gallery, 10 Politechneiou Str., Athens, Greece, Duration: 17/9-31/10/2026, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.georgebeniasgallery.com/