Jonas Burgert

Nov 16th
2009

artwork_images_882_474884_jonas-burgert

jonas_burgert_mondjager

artwork_images_882_474891_jonas-burgert

artwork_images_139228_425977_jonas-burgert

artwork_images_139228_425974_jonas-burgert

artwork_images_139228_425971_jonas-burgert

artwork_images_139228_425970_jonas-burgert

artwork_images_139228_425946_jonas-burgert

Artist Bio:

Jonas Burgert (b. 1969) is a German painter known for creating monumental works composed of figurative apparitions and dramatic contrasts of colour. Seemingly fluorescent areas glow amidst a backdrop of gray and pale hues, absorbing the spectator inside the canvas. What Burgert witnesses seems to be the drama of a new world order.

The grotesque and the distorted provide the subject-matter of Burgert’s art. The atmosphere in his paintings is of a world of destruction and decay. Bold, sensuous and opulent, they depict an apocalyptic mood of an end time, or visions of a netherworld, or a peculiar dream. Each painting is a carefully constructed stage, containing an artificial world set up with dramatic lighting, exotic costumes, stage props and sweeping staircases. As if set in the theatre or opera, fantastical make-up and costumes evoke humans and animals, shamans and magicians, giants and dwarfs, demons and harlequins, creatures dead and alive. These figures act as allegories for the human existence in its variously shaped appearances, they represent types or characters from the circus or the commedia dell’arte, or from an unknown myth. One imagines the artist controlling his cast like a puppeteer his marionettes, creating new realities and chaotic, orgiastic universes on the canvas. Rules and actions of this world and their inhabitants mostly remain mysterious and inexplicable to the viewer. However, whether Burgert’s actors are on their own or cramped together with countless other beings in a kind of contemporary history painting they have one thing in common: the loneliness of the individual. Forlorn and immobile, no one ever properly engages with anyone else, despite the surrounding crowd and the seeming action that’s going on. A horrible stillness and immobility, timelessness and silence prevail.

Burgert’s inspirations are multiple and derived from diverse ideologies and cultures. They come from post cards, literature or images of the Indian Holi Festival of Colours, or from the artist’s voyage to Egypt, where he visited the remnants of its ancient culture. Certainly, a major source of inspiration lies in art history. It has often been said that Burgert’s work picks up on strands of Late Renaissance thought, particularly the Mannerist’s love of the grotesque and the curious, of harsh and crass colour disparities and of an exaggerated, ‘unnatural’ style. Other notable inspirations are Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, El Greco, Tintoretto, Poussin and Max Beckmann.(bio continued)

www.jonasburgert.net

Jonas Burgert on Artnet

Explore Artist Watch | Shuffle Post