“My practice explores non-linear time, memory, and perception. Re-examining existing fashion media, re-photograph and re-construct physical images into digital poetics. In this space, linear time collapses. Past media constructs, present gaze, and remembered desires fold into singular, fragmented relics: approaching each piece as a visual Dada poem born from chance, collage, and deliberate disruption.
Operating part digital Dr. Frankenstein, part Charles Bukowski, with nods to John Baldessari, Richard Prince, and Andy Warhol, I crop, slice, and dice conventionally beautiful subjects into lurid, introspective forms. These pop surrealist collages are devolutions of beauty: critiques of the institutions and techniques that manufacture feminine allure. By disrupting narrative sequence, the work reflects how memory distorts perception, filtering reality through residual emotion, sexual sublimity, and art historical nostalgia.
Ultimately, these visual Dada poems inhabit a culture saturated in sublimated sex. They act as come-ons designed to engage the viewer in contemplating our contemporary landscape of allure: a primal battle for attention waged within capitalist rhetoric. By emphasizing what is edited out as much as what remains, the work brings out pulp associations of the femme fatale, offering suggestions rather than definitive answers and leaving perception deliberately unresolved.”
untitled (from "not your selfie")
Charlie Butler is a painter, sculptor, and digital collage artist based in the American Midwest.
His ongoing series, Digital Poetics, explores allure, time, and memory. Built as visual Dada poems, these pop surrealist works re-construct fashion media through digital processes and algorithmic chance, incorporating geometric layers to create high-resolution fine art prints.
Beyond the physical prints, the visual work exists alongside sculptures and paintings. Stream Dopetrax31 on Spotify, or check out Instagram @chbutle to see the artwork paired with sound.