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Artist Exhibitions:
Most current exhibitions:
25) July ’07: ArtsWorcester,
'A Cool Breeze': Summer
Member’s Exhibition.
26) Sept '07: Mechanic's
Hall, 150th Anniversary Open
House, Worcester Mass.
27) Oct '07: 'Honoring
Memory', Gallery 181, Lawrence
Mass. (juried).
28) Nov '07: ArtsWorcester
'Fire & Ice 2007'.
29) Nov '07: Art House 2007
Art ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
representation:
Dzian Gallery, Water Street,
Worcester Mass
Aurora Gallery, Main Street,
Worcester Mass
...
Further Information
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for Brian Burris
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Brian Burris has been painting for over twenty years.
He is a primitive, in the sense that he is self-taught.
Originally, he more closely identified with the
abstract expressionists, with the emphasis on the
'automatic' or subconscious act of painting, the
accompanying emotional intensity and the
anti-figurative, sometimes violent and grotesque
aesthetic, and the press as refered to him as a hard-drinking, bare-knuckles fighting hulk, comparing to both Hunter S. Thompson (and I had never met the late Mr. Thompson but Mr. Burris assures me he's no Hunter Thompson) and Jack Kerouac.
After a seven-year hiatus, Mr. Burris returned to
painting and segued into the more minimalist style
seen in color field painters like Clyfford Still, Rothko,
and Barnett Newman. In comparing him to actual painters, Rothko most frequently comes up. Burris began to explore the
parallel themes of the spiritual, and the unconscious
mind, reflected in the painting process itself
progressing according to both the will of the
subconscious and the properties of paint and
canvas, letting the execution and the subject matter
become analogous to the unconscious psyche
asserting and expressing itself, where unconscious
meets chance, spirituality borders on psychology,
and the implications of archetypal awareness and
gnostic meaning surface through the medium.
The artist received some attention for his
non-traditional artist's statements, more 'manifestos'.
Based in his background in behavioral modification
and studies in psychology (including that of
non-verbal communication), the effects of hue,
declination of line, image juxtaposition and
compartmentalization on specific areas of the brain,
as well as archetypal imagery, Burris explores the
nature of non-verbal communication of context and
emotion through color fields.
In late 2008, Mr. Burris published a collection of
works, 'Codex: Fragments & Schemata', a montage
of paintings juxtaposed with artist statements and
fragmented graphics meant to invoke the semblance
of gnosis: knowledge or insight into the infinite or
divine. The conceit being hidden knowledge carried
by prose as disinhibiting stimuli, targeting the
unconscious self by transcending linear formula and
allowing the message to bypass ordinary
consciousness, with parallels found from Voegelin to
William Blake and the Pistis Sophia, to Philip K. Dick,
held up to the mirror of Hillman psychology.
Like the Zen koan, or the moment of reflection in
which the memory does not come, or that which
lures by its absence… this montage evokes ‘the
forms of an idea of the thing and its aspects, and
brings the viewer to succumb to the illusion of the
whole’ (to paraphrase Jung).
The themes explored run from the Gnostics to
quantum physics, Freud to Hillman; to where the
metaphysical meets the subconscious, and on the
verge of the crest of sudden awareness, that
intuitive revelation, the artist, Judas-like, disavows
the meaning and implications as mere fictions and
device.
Brian Burris shows a half-dozen times a year, and
is represented by the Dzian Gallery on Water
Street in Worcester Massachusetts. He shows
through ArtsWorcester, as well as in corporate,
institutional, and retail settings. He has shown in
various venues from Cambridge to Northampton.
An entry of the artist's name into any search
engine will produce the various links with
information where to purchase his book, related
media, past articles, and show venues.
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contact artist
