Inquiry: Five Painting Practices

Chris Burnside

Chris Burnside

STATEMENT

I want lines to envelop a viewer. In my installations arcs move over the planes of a room potentially flattening, curving and opening felt architectural space. I am interested in the way partial circles are made and unmade based on a viewer’s changing position in the room and how the relationship of a drawn line to inhabited space can create an illusory atmosphere.
The acrylic and ink works on paper are a starting point for the growth of an abstract vocabulary that extends into cut plywood pieces and often into the installations. Intuitive squiggles compete with directed marks in a largely additive, layered process which often results in reappearing characters and symbols. These forms can have some figurative and architectural associations but I hope to maintain an ambiguity that the viewer ultimately resolves.
An absence of wood creates dark lines in the cut pieces disrupting events on the painted surface. Cut lines are simultaneously uniform in color but subtly variegated in thickness to maintain a framework that plays against the field of painterly marks. A painting develops on the front while a linear drawing is created on the back; they evolve together - loosely related but ultimately separate. The back drawing is then cut through the front and glued back down forcing the two sides together in a finished work.

EDUCATION

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

SELECTED EHIBITIONS

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