Michael Bottig

Understanding Art – Subversion – Utopia My works consistently address issues of social criticism and politically oriented themes. They oscillate between humour and criticism, between chance and intention, and between the artificial and the natural. When viewing a picture, a decorative perspective is just as valid as a deeply questioning one. Art arises from the desire to think about art. Consequently, artistic expressions are built on dialogues – short or long, casual or intense, indifferent or aggressive. Depending on one’s mood that day, hunger or satiety, the influence of the weather or one’s personal emotional state, the waves and chasms of the distortions in the images take shape before the viewer. Every reaction, whether to the work itself or to the content it addresses, is legitimate, including one of rejection. The imaginary element in the images lies not in what is visible or depicted, but in the viewer’s imagination, which thereby mobilises their own fantasy.

1955 Born in Vienna 1974 Passed the Matura at AHS Mödling;

Education and Background • 1975–1980: Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, in Prof. Rudolf Hausner’s masterclass. • 1980: Graduated. Alongside his work as a freelance artist, he began a long career in teaching (art education and later computer science) Artistic Career & Roles • From 1996: Active member and later a key contributor to the Badener Kunstverein. • 1998–2012: Chair of the Lower Austrian Association of Art Teachers, as well as membership of the SÜD-OST Art Association and the Lower Austrian Cultural Network. • Since 2020: Focus on freelance artistic work (retired from teaching). I live and work in Baden near Vienna.

Key exhibition cycles (selection) My work is organised into thematic blocks, which I often develop over a period of several years: • "Approach" (1996): First major catalogue presentation and exhibitions in Vienna, Baden, St. Pölten and Sombathely. • "Adam, where are you?" (2014): A direct exploration of human identity and sense of place (wall and nautical chart paintings). • "Shadow Politics" & "The Virtuality of Existence" & “The Order of Things“: works dealing with socio-political upheavals and digitalisation (Vienna, Mistelbach, Brezlav) • „Mass Migration“ (2017, Baden): An exploration of the socio-political and consumer-related implications of migration. • "Fault Lines" (2024, Stadtgalerie Wiener Neustadt): An examination of current political excesses. • "Truths" (April 2025, Atelier Bajadere): A current series exploring the construction of truth.

Illustrations • „Fear Has No Wings“ (collection of poetry, Umbruch Publishers) Mural paintings • Linurische murals (Waldegg, Adamstal Golf Club) Auction • Vienna, Semperdepot (2015)

Comments „He takes a stand and raises awareness of the injustice he has identified through aesthetic representation.“ (from „The Functional Art of Michael Bottig“, 2023, Prof. Mag. Gotthard Fellerer).

„He provides us with images that burn, that seek to break free from the confines of what are undoubtedly serious messages. In „Frauen“ (oil on canvas, 1995), this fire is depicted in concrete terms.“ (from „Annäherung“, 1996, ed. Sabine Prokop).

But in this interpretation, the image itself is a symbol of a post-postmodernist, post-deconstructivist stance – a constructive (yet unironic) attitude, not least, which seems capable of overcoming the deconstructivists„ terminal disorientation and epistemic detachment from reality (is?). The exhibition thus points clearly beyond its own title — or at least beyond Foucault’s work of the same name — without succumbing to a new (naive) romanticising pose; in an age of lost innocence, it offers a positivist answer to humanity’s and art’s age-old questions: Who are we? And: What is our relationship to the world? (introductory remarks on the exhibition “The Order of Things’, 2017, DI Dr Christoph Strnadl)

„For Michael Bottig, “Verwahrheitung„ refers to the way in which, in art, an idea – a non-real concept – is transformed into a work of art that is entirely and utterly real, and is thus “made real’. ‘Verwahrheitung’ serves to make the as yet unrealised conceivable” (Introduction to the exhibition “Verwahrheitung”, 2025, Dieter Koffler).