METIVIER TALKS | Q&A WITH BOBBIE BURGERS & ROALD NASGAARD
Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce Winged Victory, a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Bobbie Burgers. The exhibition will open on October 14th and run until November 11th. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, October 14th between 1 and 3 pm. There will be a Q&A talk between Burgers and award-winning author and curator, Roald Nasgaard at 1 pm on Saturday, October 14th.
Bobbie Burgers’ multi-faceted approach to painting continues to distance itself from its floral still life origins while still evoking the subject as its muse. In this exhibition, the paintings and works on paper edge towards complete abstraction channeling both the ethereal qualities of Helen Frankenthaler’s stained canvases and the bold, expressionistic brush strokes of Joan Mitchell. With this body of work, Burgers explains she was guided by the masterpiece of Greek sculpture, Winged Victory of Samothrace - its beauty amplified because of what is absent and unknown.
The dialogue between the incomplete and the imagination is the guiding force behind this new body of work. Winged Victory references the ancient statue of the same name, a historical touchpoint for the allure of the incomplete. Fragmented, the sculpture is more than the imagined whole; not bound by any one form the incomplete becomes infinite through the eye of the viewer. In contemplating the enigmatic nature of Winged Victory I found these qualities in my own work, how the tension between the abstract and the representational invites the viewer to engage in the act of creation by filling the gap between the two.
- Bobbie Burgers
A throughline in Burgers’ work over the last several years has been the fluidity with which she moves across different mediums, including paper and printmaking, and allows them to inspire and influence one another. A new technique in this exhibition begins with printing details of her canvases on archival paper and using this illusion of texture as a jumping off point, or as Burgers describes, “something to respond to”. The paper is then transformed with elements of collage as well as painting and drawing.
