Harlequin, 2010

new piece going to be shown in Territories show @ Vers10n Fest this week in Bridgeport, Chicago. Final version of this will include video component. this animated gif gives u a flavor of the piece and what this video piece will eventually look like.

Opening Of Version Festival
Territories Group Exhibition
@ Zhou B Center (1029 W 35th St)
www.zbcenter.org
7-10pm – exhibition runs through May 3

Opening night of Version 10 begins with Territories, a group exhibition. Meet participating artists and get an advanced look at the festival program ahead. Features work by: Tomas Moreno, Chad Gerth, Hui-min Tsen, Chris Larson, Hideous Beast (Josh Ippel, Charlie Roderick), Tim Graham, Jennifer Mills, Xavier Nuez, Miguel Guzman, Monument 1.5, Alexa Loftus, Peter Feigenbaum, Aron Gent, Aaron Delehanty, Holly Holmes, Before Cake after Dinner, Se Young, Brian Murer, Erik DeBat, Sarah Ross, Bill Mackey, Mike Slattery, Tom Burtonwood, Kariel ( Karri Kuoppala and Muriel Laesser),  Heloisa Escudero, Jeff Zimmerman,  Lise Haller Baggesen, Gitte Bog, Gudrun Hasle, Anni Holm, Berit Nørgaard, & Niels Post.

Curated by Dayton Castleman & Ed Marszewski

(Exhibition runs through May 3rd, Open Sat 12-5pm and by appointment: 773 837 0145)

so i just put up a flickr set of my newest piece… tentatively titled DuBeta… as in Display Unit Beta. i know i want to title these pieces and perhaps all this new work in the style of El Lissitzky specifically his “Proun” titling, but that’s as far as i’ve got. i’ve been calling this piece “Display Unit” for a while now and that refers to the end game where this piece becomes a living surface with screens and what not… but for now the pieces are totally meat world, not moving parts, no embedded smart tech just a bit of laser cut chipboard, paint and tape. And i totally get the pseudo modernist thing and love it. anyhow so i’m thinking of calling this piece Dubeta. a conflation of Display Unit and Beta. in many ways this is the Beta, it’s not a prototype specifically but there are a few kinks still to be worked out…. Dubeta also sounds a bit like Do Better, which is also a subliminal nod i guess to Beckett and his notion of the importance of failure.  so…. hmm. anyhow i’ll be shipping this piece to NYC today for the Bad at Sports show at Apex Art, “Don’t Piss on Me and Tell me it’s raining!’” …. image below shows DU prototype (Duproto) hanging out with Dubeta, you can see more of their antics in the flickr set.

I posted a bunch of photos of my studio to flickr a few days ago, with some of the work in progress due for the show at Fountain Studios. Right now i’m trying to finish up the drawing components to pair with the sculptures. Will update soon. Keep this frequency clear!

Studio, Hospitalfield House, 1998

Studio, Hospitalfield House, 1998

Studio view, 1995

My first year at LCAD i shared a room in the halls of residence with Andrew Poulter. Andy went on to do his MA at Chelsea College of Art in London then disappear off the face of the earth. His paintings were clemente-esqe and u can see one of them to the left nestled between the larger blue canvas on the right nad the tree of the left. i was utterly lost at this point in my art practice and was borrowing from Andy a bit in terms of figurative stuff, hence the blue canvas on the wall. i guess the arm is “reaching” for something… a figure that seems to be backing away. maybe i knew this figurative stuff wasn’t for me at the time and this painting tells truth. who knows… but i loved the fact we painted in there 24 hours a day all the time to the banging sounds of the KLF, 808 State and any acid house tape Andy could lay his hands on. I think for a while we had every tape, LP and bootleg CD of the KLF in all it’s various guises and would belt them out much to the chargrin of our neighbors i think. the lights we always low and the curtains drawn. Andy painted in these super bright colors but when u took his canvases outside to transport them to school for crits they were like sun beams, painfully bright….. the tree was dragged in one night, i think i wanted to draw from nature so instead of leave the studio we brought nature inside, albeit a dead tree. i think we kept it till pretty much the end of the year. when we moved out we filled the holes in the walls with cotton wool and covered them with paper and corn flakes to simulate the wall paper…. Andy if u r out there and u find this post email me: tom@tomburtonwood.com