On the occasion of his first exhibition in Brazil, American conceptual artist Tom Burr presents a group of new works produced during his stay in Sao Paulo. Over the past thirty years, Burr has been investigating the relation of his own body to given sites, legacies of historical personas and forms of abstraction. Drawing on two parallel elements: the Metaesquemas by Hélio Oiticica and the modernist house occupied by auroras (both from the year 1957), the artist establishes relations between “a constructive will” of the formulations of the New Objectivity and something of the American Minimalist and Conceptual experience. Burr’s trajectory is marked by the use of references to queer figures. In this case, Burr chose Oiticica as the pivotal figure to reflect on his own subjectivity. As Tom Burr stated “I was curious to think about where Oiticica ends and I begin, or where I end and he begins”.
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood, t-shirts, book pages, steel pushpins
24 x 24 x 2 in
plywood and black matte paint
78 3/4 x 118 x 8 in
plywood, wall blanket, blackout material, steel pushpins
72 x 72 x 3 in
plywood, wall blanket, blackout material, steel pushpins
72 x 72 x 3 in
Tom Burr (New Haven, Connecticut – 1963) attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Whitney Independent Study Program, where he studied with Craig Owens, Benjamin Buchloh, Yvonne Rainer, and Barbara Kruger among others. During this time Burr immersed himself in the theoretical writings and conceptual practices that would expand his own work and thinking. In 1993 Burr was invited to participate in several large-scale exhibitions in Europe, including Sonsbeek ’93, curated by Valerie Smith. It was for the Sonsbeek exhibition that Burr created his highly regarded work “An American Garden,” a scale recreation of a section of Central Park’s Ramble, and a direct extension of Robert Smithson’s writings and the culmination of a body of work dealing with public parks, landscape, naturalism, and gay male identity. The artist is known for fusing forms of Minimalism with certain conditions in New York’s recent history, specifically the war on public sexuality during the Aids crisis. His works are forms of expanded sculpture, with closed architectural spaces such as bars, cages and boxes. These works, often painted with matte black palette, evoke spaces of control and containment, as well as the “safe zones” of underground cultures. Tom Burr lives and works in New York. Selected solo exhibitions include Tom Burr/New Haven: Pre-Existing Conditions, Marcel Breuer Armstrong Rubber Building (New Haven, 2017); Surplus of Myself, Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster, 2017); Gravity Moves Me, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims, 2011); Addict – Love, Sculpture Center (New York, 2008); Moods, Secession (Vienna, 2007); Extrospective, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (Laussane, 2006); Deep Purple, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, 2002). He is preparing a major exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in Hartford. Selected recent group exhibitions include Skulptur Projekte 2017 (Münster, 2017); Question the Wall Itself, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2016); Béton, Kunsthalle Wien (Wien, 2016); Ordinary Pictures, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2016); To expose to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Wien, 2015); The Present Modernism, MUMOK (Wien, 2014); 30/60 Works from the Collection of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Mario Marini Museum (Florence, 2014) Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2014); Not Yet Titled, Museum Ludwig (Köln, 2013); 12th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2011) and the Whitney Biennial 2004 (New York, 2004). His work is present in important institutional collections such as Centre Pompidou (Paris); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Ludwig Museum (Colônia); MOCA (Los Angeles); MuMOK (Viena); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). Tom Burr’s writings have been included in numerous publications including Artforum; Texte zür Kunst, and October magazine, among others. “Tom Burr, Anthology: Writings 1991-2015” was published by Sternberg Press.
