"Tom Burckhardt ~ Louder Milk" at the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn

Written by William Harrison Sunday, 27 November 2011 21:27

Brooklyn, NY -  The Pierogi Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Tom Burckhardt. The exhibition is on view until May 8th 2011. In this new body of work, Burckhardt continues in his persistent effort to blur the boundaries between abstraction and representation, between painting and sculpture, between tradition and invention. Rather than trying to merge opposites, however, he works to embody each simultaneously. His imagery can appear entirely abstract, or a figurative element can emerge here or there.

Traditional oil paint is applied to cast plastic rather than stretched canvas. There is a sense of the paintings being simultaneously hand made and mass-produced. Burckhardt enjoys the tension that these contradictions produce; their effect of slowing down the viewing and perception process, and the fact that the paintings cannot be easily “read” in one glance. Regarding the imagery in his paintings, Burckhardt notes the effect of pareidolia, where recognizable, representational images can appear randomly. When this effect crops up, he does not veer away, but follows the image to see where it leads.



The exhibition consists of a group of intimately scaled paintings, each approximately twelve and one-half by fourteen and one-half inches. In a painting titled “Bad Mustard” a series of geometric shapes come together and appear to be architectural forms or rooflines. In “Louder Milk” a group of odd organic, nose-like shapes congregate in a corner. Only after looking closely does it become apparent that the texture of the surfaces comes not from the paint but through the casting process and is consistent throughout the paintings. The kinds of nails that typically attach canvas to a stretcher are painted around each side, subtly revealing the faux nature of the structure. The back of each painting, invisible to the gallery viewer, has a painted wood texture stretcher bar and further reveals the whimsical nature of the faux quality Burckhardt employs.

Tom Burckhardt is a painter and sculptor who was born in New York City in 1964. He has a B.F.A. from SUNY Purchase and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work is represented by the Caren Golden Fine Art Gallery and the Tibor De Nagy Gallery, both in New York City. His works have been exhibited at the Aldrich Museum (Ridgefield, Connecticut), the Weatherspoon Museum (Greensboro, North Carolina), the Neuberger Museum (Purchase, New York), Diverseworks (Houston, Texas), and the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, New York), among others. He has been awarded a NYFA Grant(1986), a MarieWalsh Sharpe Studio Grant (1992-93), and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1996, and 2005). Tom Burckhardt currently lives in New York City and Searsmont, Maine, with his wife and two children. Burckhardt’s work has been exhibited widely and is currently on view in “New Image Sculpture” (McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX), and was recently included in the Annual Exhibit at the National Academy Museum (New York, NY) and “A World In Cardboard” (City Museum, Aalst, Belgium). Burckhardt was born in and currently lives and works in New York City. Visit the artist's website at ... http://www.tomburckhardt.com

The Pierogi Gallery, founded in 1994 by Joe Amrhein, is an artist-run gallery located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in an area now vital to the larger art community because of its concentration of diverse artists and its innovative gallery scene. Pierogi has monthly solo shows which feature the work of emerging and mid-career artists. The focus is on one-person shows in order to highlight an individual artist’s work. The exhibitions cover an eclectic range of media and style, from the performance installations of Ward Shelley, to the panoramic and filmic drawings of Dawn Clements, as well as curated exhibitions such as the award-winning Dead Tree installation (a recreation of the Robert Smithson piece originally installed in Dusseldorf’s Kunsthalle, 1969). In February 1999 Pierogi relocated from its original tight quarters to a larger space. There is now a main gallery, an additional smaller gallery, and a separate space for the Flat Files, as well as a video library. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.pierogi2000.com/

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