"The Sea, Facing Gibraltar"

Artists

Robert Burnier

Press release

Tommaso Corvi-Mora is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new work by Robert Burnier, his first at the gallery. The artist has written recently: “I regard the folded and compressed forms of my work as phenomena of material and choice, retaining a record of their own emergence in how the material holds touch. Each move is informed by another, and color transforms this sculptural experience. While there are sources of inspiration, the process is still a new problem in and of itself, not primarily a representation. To relive each sculptural work through color allows me to ask questions of becoming, identity, encounter and transformation. They are more experiences than abstractions, seeking a parallel dance between diasporic African and Western cosmologies.

With these works, I continue my project of interpreting the hues of ancient African, Mediterranean and Mesopotamian objects. The Bull’s head from Xerxes’ Hundred Columns Hall, the Qustul incense burner from Nubia, and faience ceramics of ancient Egypt, for example, are housed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in my hometown of Chicago. My frequent visits there have deeply affected my sense of color, prompting considerations of its relationship to the movement of peoples.