Chris Burnside

Chris Burnside

STATEMENT

My work consists primarily of cut/panel pieces in wood, installations and murals, and works on paper using a variety of media. In all of these I have been concerned with exploring linear elements and the built environment. The imagery alludes to architectural spaces without depicting them, creating lines that simultaneously obscure and dissolve connections to the world while maintaining a link to physical realities of ornament, texture and most importantly a viewer’s changing position.

For example, in my installations, consistent-radius circles move across and respond to walls, corners, and floors, altering and heightening the viewer’s experience of architectural space. Moving through the installation, these circles alternately transform into ellipses and arcs; they intersect and interact with other pieces of circles creating new geometries and new relationships to the space. Inside of this network, intuitive, accidental, and random marks may weave through the geometric framework distorting a rational system.

Integrating marks created out of different systems extends to the cut pieces where I develop a physical object that allows for an element of surprise and the possibility of undermining the criteria that I have set up to create a piece. I begin by separating the front and back of a piece of plywood. I then create two distinct and unrelated paintings. As both sides evolve I cut out one of the sides through the other and then glue the pieces back down, thus fusing the two works. I continue to work on the face of the painting. It is now one work where the evidence of its making reveals a tactile object that can be taken apart and reassembled visually. I use the liquid acrylic and ink works on paper to quickly sketch and move through ideas I might adapt to the installations and cut/panel pieces through a slower, more laborious process.

I want to make work that will encourage contemplation—a respite from the daily inundation and unconscious filtering of visual experience.

EDUCATION

2001 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Masters of Fine Arts
1996 University of Washington, Seattle, Bachelors of Fine Arts

SELECTED EHIBITIONS

2009 Gross McCleaf Gallery, Solo Show, Philadelphia
Camel Art Space, Outside the Time Zone, Christopher Rawson and Julian Calero, curators, Brooklyn
2008 Gross McCleaf Gallery, Inquiry, Philadelphia
National Academy Museum, 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Art, New York
2007 Alpan Gallery, Installation Wall Drawing, Cut Pieces and Works on Paper, Huntington, NY
Tastes Like Chicken Art Space, One Pill Makes You Small, Brooklyn
2006 Washington Art Association, Installation and drawings, Washington, CT
Real Art Ways, Benefit Auction, Hartford, CT
Artists Space, Night of 1000 Drawings, New York
2005 Eugene, Yili Art Foundation 3rd Annual Exhibition, curated by Orlando Lima, New York
SOIL Gallery, Abstraction Obstruction: Working the Meridians, curated by Jeff Burgurt, Seattle
2004 Open Air, Installation, New York
2003 Kresge Gallery, The Object: Color as Carrier, curated by Seth Ely, Ramapo College, New Jersey
2002 Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Installation, Philadelphia
2001 Horton Gallery, MFA Thesis Exhibition, curated by Matt Freedman, Philadelphia
Fox Gallery, Two Person Exhibition, Philadelphia
2000 Meyerson Gallery, Graduate School of Fine Arts Award Winners’ Show, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Wayne Art Center, 2000 National Spring Open Juried Exhibition, Barbara Grossman, juror, Wayne, PA
Creative Arts Workshop, Vital Signs: Drawing as Inquiry, Robert Reed, juror, New Haven, CT
1996 Jacob Lawrence Gallery, BFA Thesis Exhibition, University of Washington, Seattle

SLIDE REGISTRIES AND AWARDS

2008 S.J. Wallace Truman Fund Prize, National Academy, New York
2005 Drawing Center Slide Registry, New York
2002 Real Art Ways Slide Registry, Hartford, CT
2000 Stuart Egnal Scholarship, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Juror's Prize, National Spring Open Juried Exhibition, Barbara Grossman, juror, Wayne, PA