Biography
Pavel Büchler (b. Prague, Czechoslovakia 1952) is a UK-based artist, influential teacher and occasional writer. He is Emeritus Professor in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art. He was awarded the Northern Art Prize 2009 and The Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2012, Büchler has recently exhibited at, among others, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2014); Broad Art Museum, Michigan (2014); Power Plant, Toronto (2013); The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2012); Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis (2011); Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneve (2011); Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel (2011); Museion, Bolzano (2011); DOX, Prague (2010), Tinguely Museum, Basel (2010); and MuHKA, Antwerp (2010). Büchler was influenced by conceptual art in 1970s – or, as he insists, by the creative misunderstandings that conceptual art suffered in translation to the Eastern European cultural and political context. He says of his own practice: "making nothing happen", and is committed to the catalytic nature of art - its potential to draw attention to the obvious and revealing it as ultimately strange. He was on the panel for the Annual Award of the Contemporary Art Society in 2010.
