Anthony Burnham
Even Space Does Not Repeat
January 15 – March 27, 2011
Anthony Burnham, Fragment, 2009. Collection of Michel Yergeau
Artist Talk: Thursday, January 13, 4 p.m.
Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation, Room 201
Opening Reception: Friday, January 14, 7 p.m.
Walter Phillips Gallery
Although admittedly a still life painter, Anthony Burnham maintains a close working relationship with photography and sculpture through his interest in the work of conceptual artists from the 1960s and 1970s — a contradictory position in relation to conceptualism, which rejected painting in favour of photography, a medium far more suited for constructing and recording time-based or performative moments. This radically new approach to the camera was instrumental in developing alternative methods of exploring visual forms as it tested notions of spatial structure and recorded this transformation. Burnham uses photography as a tool to reference this particular history, and to explore his own interest in representation, specifically that of illusionistic space. The camera has the ability to capture what does not really exist; by altering an angle, a shadow, or by flattening out a three-dimensional object, it still functions as a definitive tool for rethinking space and form.
Burnham uses these formal qualities of photography as a starting point for his multidisciplinary, multi-dimensional explorations; this process of slow experimentation is applied to objects, materials, and the space of his studio. His practice of rethinking and remaking is essential, whether brought to bear on a historically important work, the objects he makes in his studio, or to a poster he finds on the street — everything goes through a radical transformation. This interest in deconstructing and reconstructing is crucial, as it gives the artist firsthand experience of his subject. Knowing that an object or spatial relationship can never totally be understood until it is experienced in multiple mediums, the sculptural constructions, folds, copies, and photographs are all used as notes for future reference. The effect of each media leads to an intimate knowledge of subject, a relationship strengthened over time; the final paintings are a reflection of this carefully crafted and considered method.
