Andrew Burgess: Pop Geometry - New Drawings and Collage

Press Release

After an extended period of time hidden away in his studio painting ten large oil on canvas cityscape paintings, including the iconic “New York Diner” and a six foot panoramic aerial view of the Docklands painted in an abstracted patchwork of tiny shapes in a palette of silver and gold metallic tones, the London based artist Andy Burgess has switched to a more playful mode of experimentation with a extensive body of small scale artwork on paper, card and velum.

This small scale work, very much handmade and “Lo-Fi” allows Burgess the freedom to explore a multitude of ideas simultaneously without feeling too precious or restricted. “I can mix and match visual languages and incorporate all the visual stimuli that I garner from the outside world and create composite artworks that give expression to my personal passions and from the world of art history, graphic design and contemporary architecture.”

The collage Burgess has been making recently reflects his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930's to 1950's, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years, delving around in the dusty recesses of antique malls and thrift stores. This ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut
up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems; dazzling multicoloured pop art pieces. Burgess admits to being influenced by great pop artists such as Andy Warhol and our own Peter Blake, revelling in their sense of colour and celebration of imagery from the world of advertising and popular culture and also powerful emotions of memory and nostalgia. But in addition to these great visual artists Burgess sees an affinity with the Beat writing and poetry of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg.

Another more recent body of work reflects an interest in other early Twentieth Century art movements such as Dada, Russian Constructivism and Bauhaus, especially the preference anddevotion shared by these movements for printed design and book-making with bold geometric form, red and black colour schemes and experimental typography. Burgess has made several pieces combining geometric forms with American style graphics seeking a playful meeting of two distinct artistic cultures, East and West, old and new.

As opposed to the large scale oil paintings with their strong physical presence these new collages have the feel of miniatures, tiny gem like works, intricately constructed like Ottoman mosaics or Navaho jewellery. “Unconsciously my artwork has been influenced by my travels and geographical location. I spent some time in Istanbul exploring the mosques and palaces and imbibing Islamic design and more recently I've been in the American South-West looking at Native American tapestry and fabrics. The simplicity of design and vibrant colour is
just sensational.”

The beauty of making small scale work is that anything goes. Burgess can mix styles, chop and change, work on several stylistically different pieces at once and see how they feed into each other “It keeps my work fresh and unexpected. I'm not an artist who likes to do twenty of the same thing – I try and discover something new in each work.”

Burgess has also returned to pencil drawing but these new drawings explore tone rather than line. Clearly making collage has radically changed Burgess' drawing, slowing him down and increasing the exploration of bold shapes and tones. Some imagined aerial views of New York City are softer and more dreamlike, stylised visions of the city quite different from the frenetic real life aerial views that Burgess was once known for. Recent more abstract drawings incorporate squares, rectangles, grids and repeated lines of various strengths and thicknesses. These drawings also reference some of Burgess' favourite artists. We see Jasper John's targets and Malevich's black squares combined –rectangles, curves, semicircles, the building blocks of visual language from typography to architecture.