https://gerbrandburger.nl Gerbrand Burger Wed, 29 Jun 2022 09:04:21 +0000 https://gerbrandburger.nl en https://gerbrandburger.nl/home Wed, 29 Jun 2022 09:04:21 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/home Nothing At All 5 September - 1 November 2026 Solo exhibition, Iona Foundation, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsClaudy Jongstra, Gerbrand Burger, Mirte van Laarhoven 4 September - 14 November 2026 Galerie Fontana, Amsterdam, The Netherlands https://gerbrandburger.nl/shapes Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:05:47 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/shapes Gerbrand Burger often works with found material. He uses left-over materials from furniture and design companies that CNC mill and laser cut, as well as offcuts from his own studio. These existing shapes appeal to him: instead of reshaping the material, he looks at its shapes as a given, to form a dialogue with forms from the public domain, to enrich his visual language, which becomes an amalgam of fragments form very different sources, both pre-existing and invented. A newly cut shape creates rest material, which Burger then reuses and assembles within the same work. This residual flow iterates between form and action; by tracing parts of these leftovers onto the material to be sawn out, and by combining different types of leftover material in this way in a contour, a new, spontaneous form emerges that is unique, but also an inimitable echo of earlier forms. https://gerbrandburger.nl/volumes Sun, 17 Oct 2021 11:57:54 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/volumes Gerbrand Burger has a fascination for a certain duality between materials and digital images. Many materials are hybrid, in the sense that their visible exterior consists of a digital print of another material, for example. There is a moment, a place in between, where physical materials and digital images meet. When seeing such a hybrid image/object, the viewer can switch back and forth between the illusion of perception and material reality, between digital and analogue. https://gerbrandburger.nl/spaces Sun, 17 Oct 2021 11:58:05 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/spaces As part of his artistic practice, Burger has developed himself as a designer, occasionally taken on commissions in the field of interior design and architecture. This experience found its way into his sculptural work. Designing and building his own home in 2014 has been a turning point for Burger in that respect. His role as initiator and board member of cooperative Square 28, through which he realised a new studio building in Amsterdam, has provided even more confidence and a more solid basis. The cooperative project made him aware of the value of bringing people together; activating a broad network in and outside the arts field has an enormous potential to realise widely supported projects. Cooperative Square 28 has further strengthened Burgers’ vision of his artistic practice, which integrates different domains of art, architecture, design and nature. https://gerbrandburger.nl/art-and-design Sun, 17 Oct 2021 11:58:35 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/art-and-design Gerbrand Burger consciously chooses to make his projects independently and by hand. In the process of dealing with materials, choices are made intuitively through the physical contact with the material; ideas are quickly transformed into matter. In this way, Burger leaves his handwriting in every detail. Craftsmanship is also about connecting to the physical world; connecting to a place in a tangible and real way through materiality. In line with this, Burger does not consider art a closed-off domain. https://gerbrandburger.nl/traditional-and-industrial Sun, 17 Oct 2021 12:06:37 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/traditional-and-industrial Gerbrand Burger is interested in both technological innovations in the processing of materials and the old traditional and manual way of processing. The two can create a field of tension, but they can also complement each other. Technological innovation and age-old knowledge of crafts are both essential in order to achieve a sustainable and durable relationship with (raw) materials. For the works Strata #1 & #2 for example, Burger has made handmade glazed ceramic plates, cut with a water jet cutting technique. Burger has assembled the cut-out ceramic parts together with CNC-milled and handmade wooden parts into spatial sculptures. Clay and wood are both ancient, natural materials that require a fundamentally different way of forming and shaping. Clay is built up, from hand-formed spheres or rolls, whereas with wood the form is liberated from the solid log. The more recent techiniques of milling and water jet cutting are unique to our time, and bring their own character of form to the work. https://gerbrandburger.nl/scale-and-dimension Sun, 17 Oct 2021 12:07:15 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/scale-and-dimension Gerbrand Burger is fascinated by the flatness of some materials, while at the same time he cannot help but search for forms of spatial illusion in his assemblages. Literature has been a meaningful source of inspiration in the past, especially from Latin American literature like Cortazar, Borges, Arlt, Bioy Casares and Boloaño.  These stories are dealing with fiction, with elements of science fiction and magical realism, where dream and reality intermingle. The play with a sophisticated form and an elusive content fascinates Burger immensely and can be traced back into his work, playing with scale and dimension. https://gerbrandburger.nl/trees Tue, 07 Dec 2021 15:12:54 +0000 Gerbrand Burger https://gerbrandburger.nl/trees The position Burger occupies as an artist is firmly rooted in society. The times in which we live, with growing ecological and economic crises, has prompted Burger to think and act bigger. He has looked into one of the basic conditions of our life on this planet: trees. After finishing construction of the artist studio cooperative Square 28 Burger asked himself how he really would like to work, and decided to focus entirely on the use of wood and trees.  With support from Mondriaan Fund’s Contemporary Use of Crafts scheme in 2019, Burger was able to set up a collaboration with craftsman and wood merchant Michiel van Leersum in Friesland, the Netherlands, who encouraged him to think further and to consistently pursue his principles for material use. Burger has done extensive research into wood and trees, and how to connect with them in his work. The importance of trees has become even more clear to him and with growing enthusiasm, he has laid the foundation for a long-term project: Thinking Forest. Thinking Forest aims to combine the production of wood and other forest products with the presentation of contemporary art and cultural events, regenerative forestry with a long term perspective and small scale development and construction of biobased housing on a new forest estate.  Check this website for updates or subscribe to the newsletter.