LONDON.- schlagen und bleiben is the first exhibition to focus solely on Jonas Burgert’s drawings as an independent body of work. While the artist is best known for intensely coloured, large-scale paintings, this intimate exhibition focuses solely on intricate drawings on paper, each subtly rendered in pencil.
Densely populated tableaux are how Burgert explores non-linear storytelling. Often created at the same time as these expansive pictorial dramas, the subjects of his individual portraits are exiles from the main story, isolated within their own frame. This exhibition explores Burgert’s portraits as entities in their own right. Untethered from a central narrative, they become newly enigmatic, each alluding to its own particular mysteries.
Burgert is interested in the personification of psychology through figurative painting and it is his ongoing close observation of human emotion that gives his characters such a potent charge.
Jonas Burgert was born in 1969 in Berlin, Germany where he lives and works. He graduated in 1996 from The Academy of Fine Arts (UdK), Berlin and in 1997 studied for the post graduate title Meisterschueler under Professor Dieter Hacker. Recent solo exhibitions include Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, AT (2017); Museo D’Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo), Bologna, IT (2017); Hannover Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, DE (2017); Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, AT (2011) and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, DE (2008). Major group exhibitions include The Museum of Modern Art Gunma, Gunma, JP (2017); Somerset House, London, UK (2016) and Pivot Art + Culture, Seattle, US (2015). His work is in major public and private collections internationally including Denver Art Museum, Denver, US; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, DE; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, US and Rubell Family Art Collection, Miami, US.
In 2020 his work will be the subject of a major solo exhibition at ARP Museum, Bahnhof am Rolandseck, Remagen, DE.
The exhibition is on view at
Blain/Southern through 19 January, 2019.
