Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:
‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’
Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design, and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.
Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:
‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’
Alongside the large-scale paintings, Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s–50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-coloured pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.
Andy Burgess has been represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2004.