From Loring Knoblauch’s review for Collector Daily:

[Dietmar Busse’s] series is consistently engaging as both a bounded artistic problem solving exercise and as a sensitive extension of possible performative selves. Busse has made the most from a limited set of variables: body paint color (generally white, blue, red, or black, often matched by backdrop color, to create an enveloping studio set) and scavenged floral specimens. His results play with textural ideas of decoration and pattern, sculptural changes to the typical shape of his body (via extending leaves and blossoms), and the more conceptual identity-shaping possibilities of camouflage and body modification.

The individual works are filled with small surprises and associations: a single blossom as a mouth replacement; petals arranged like fish scales or bird feathers; large leaves like flapping wings; and petals that are meticulously placed to trace the edges of foreheads, cheekbones, eyes, ears, and shoulders. Each of these strategies rebalances our assumptions about what human body looks like, taking Busse’s slicked-back androgyny as a starting point for various flights of fancy. Some of his aesthetic choices feel like boldly deliberate alterations (or provocations), while others seem more evolutionary, like mutations that have started to overtake his humanity. . .
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Browse the exhibition “Dietmar Busse | My Life as a Flower” at CLAMP