Tom Burr "Black and Blue" Solo Exhibition

Ben, Bandaged, Beat Up, Beat Up Again, and Bewildered (Heal me) Object-Installation 2008. Tom Burr's "Black and Blue" solo exhibition is on view at Almine Rech Gallery from March 20 to April 19. Born in 1963, Tom Burr is one of New York's most active artists today. His work operates between object, furniture, architecture, sculpture, and the body, revealing itself within the physical structures of Minimalism and dramatic spatial dialogue. The theme of "black and white" extends his "Addict-Love" exhibition, focusing on modernist subjective consciousness as an inevitable and predetermined series of events, though its execution remains uncertain. While dominated by black and white, color is not the primary intent; rather, this expanded compositional form addresses aesthetics of trauma or bodily pain. Between the choices of enhancing color and physical fading, the result is a body marked by trauma. The concept of the physical body—its limits, flaws, and fragility—is explored in Tommy "Who Is," a figure who is mute, deaf, and blind, metaphorically embedded in these sculptural-object qualities. The exhibition establishes various states of support, position, and binding for the works, such as being suppressed on the ground, bound to pillars, chained, bent, or inlaid, further offering a sharp critique of cold Modernism.

Continuing the exploration of Addict-Love, Tom Burr presents four extraordinary sculptures. Most striking is "Black Spiral (See me)," a right-angle installation forming a diagonal black railing, with an old-fashioned gramophone placed on the floor in the center, holding a record of Tommy "Who Is." The gramophone serves as a synonym for sound, an object that people can participate in sharing. It becomes the core of the work; however, the mute, deaf, and blind record of Tommy "Who Is" is itself a metaphor for sound. Here, the record becomes a silent object, just as the meaning of mute, deaf, and blind transforms it into pure visual perception, prompting inquiries into social disability and bodily trauma from extraordinary perspectives in art anthropology and sociology.

Several specific figures appear in Addict-Love, presented here through referential means. For example, "Black Construction (Feel me)" consists of four folding whiteboards decreasing in size, standing upright at a right angle. A canvas garment covers the large upper right angle, while a blue book labeled "Contemporary Art" rests on both right angles, appearing quite intellectual. On the floor, a canvas fold lies half-open. Within this plastic geometric structure, the figure of Chick Austin—a curator at early 20th-century American museums and the first to introduce Picasso to the American public—is metaphorically represented. "Blue, Period (Touch me)" is a rhythmic form constructed from four folding whiteboards, pasted with images of popular fashion. A black feather scarf surrounds the lower right angle in high-contrast black and white, full of poetry and sensuality, presenting the composer Kurt Weill (famous for his opera The Three Penny Opera) in anthropomorphized objects. Finally, sandwiched between two white pillars, "Ben, Bandaged, Beat Up, Beat Up Again, and Bewildered (Heal me)" is a hanging structural form of four folding whiteboards anthropomorphized, suspended by iron chains and bound with hospital gauze. Under expressions of extreme trauma and unease, it points to a special figure in Addict-Love: Chanel, who enjoyed drinking, smoking cigars, wearing perfume, and wine. This series utilizes the unusual object-form combinations of folding whiteboards to create bodily language and gestures, transforming objects into extraordinary imagery of characters.