Andy Burgess

Eclectic Color

Exhibition Dates: January 14th – February 18th 2023

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 14th from 3-5pm

Skidmore Contemporary Art

Andy Burgess
The Hat Shop
Oil on canvas
48” x 36”
2022

On the back of a sellout show at Art Miami, internationally acclaimed artist Andy Burgess presents an entirely new body of work for his first one-person show at Skidmore Contemporary. Departing from his well-known reinterpretations of modernist and mid-century architecture, Burgess has plunged himself into a nostalgic and evocative world of familiar objects and Pop Art inspired themes.

Burgess’s new canvases are most likely to be described as still-lives, but they are more like group portraits of objects in situ. One painting is a dynamic depiction of a shop window displaying men’s hats, the starting point being a photograph the artist himself took in Sicily. Employing a looser and more painterly style but with all the trademark color that he is known for, the painting revels in the sinuous shapes and curves of the hats and their brims along with silk scarves and shimmering reflections in the window.

Other paintings depict iconic books displayed in a second-hand bookstore. But rather than the book spines Burgess paints the covers themselves, with all their evocative retro design and typography. In this way, the painting becomes a cultural essay referencing not only the artist’s own personal preferences (Bauhaus, Jazz, travel, etc.) but also political and polemical themes. Most of all, the painting is a love letter to books as a medium for cultural ideas and bold graphic design.

The theme that begins to emerge is our shared affection for the objects that have moved us - the clothes, books, and games that make up our shared culture. The paintings become meditations on memory and nostalgia, and in our increasingly screen dominated lives they are a welcome celebration of all things analogue, physical, and tactile.