Lucinda Burgess: FLOW

F LOW LUCINDA BURGESS AN EXHIBITION PROPOSAL

F LOW LUCINDA BURGESS

For many years I have been interested in the way an object changes according to the viewer’s position in space in relationship to it. The object is perceived as fixed, solid and lasting but the first-hand experience is anything but. It is this relationship between viewer and object that I’m most interested in; the viewer’s participation is an essential ingredient.

Having spent over a decade in a Buddhist monastery in England, I am keen to emphasize primary experience and its overwhelmingly fleeting nature.

Not all of the works shown in this document have to necessarily be shown together, I have many others that could be included. Perhaps it is also worth saying that sometimes I have made site specific work that has been included in the solo exhibition.

As a viewer walks around a work or installation, the colours keep changing according to the changing light and the position of the viewer in relationship to the object. As the viewer looks up, lines behind glass break up and become zigzags; as the viewer looks straight ahead those same lines become straight.

Take Borderlines, 2017, which is a sheet of graphite on paper rolling down the wall onto the floor.

Viewed from one direction it looks tough and metallic; viewed from another, the same roll of paper looks fragile and delicate.

Seeing Straight III, 2021

Borderlines, 2017

In Same, 2014, steel angles on the floor are walked on, they look and feel like a foot grille or a cattle grid. An identical set of steel angles are placed on the wall, in this position they look like modernist art. The changing context changes the thing itself.

Nothing is fixed. As Heraclitus famously said, ‘We can’t step into the same river twice’. There is nothing but flow.

Same, 2014

Variations in Red, 2020

Just as a line, or a material or a colour is clearly being experienced as changeable, so are our ideas of things and categories. In Borderlines, 2017, a drawing is becoming a sculpture. In ‘Variations in Red’, 2020, a painting is borrowing elements of architecture. It isn’t clear which category a work falls into. Things grade into other things without clear boundaries.

On top of this evident flux, I use materials that are particularly subject to change. Steel, apparently stable solid and lasting is changing as the rust grows over the mirrored surfaces. Glass glints and flashes, reflecting like water. Graphite, seen en masse looks both black and then white depending on where the viewer stands. Red, supposedly the same red, is a multitude of colours, depending on the angle of the plane of paper in relation to the light.

We hold ideas of solid unchanging things existing out there, an objective reality, but in viewing these works, we are reminded that ultimately there is only the meeting point of consciousness and object.

That meeting point is more like a dance to the movement of time. Fluid, transient, and always on the move.

I felt that my work has a natural affinity to the work previously shown at your institution and that the immersive character of my installations would work well in your space for a solo show. It is my feeling that the pared down minimalist aesthetic would be better suited to a German audience than to the British one that I am used to.

Difference, 2014

Front Cover Detail: Variations in red, 2020 Paper, aluminium 197 x 81 x 13 cm

Page 2 Seeing Straight III, 2021 Paper, glass and aluminium 150 x 49 x 2 cm

Page 3 Borderlines, 2017 Paper, pencil and steel 170 x 175 x 32cm

Page 4 Same, 2014 Steel, polished and rusting, 2 sets of 9 lengths, wall and floor each set 29 x 100 x 3cm Page 5 Variations in red, 2020 Paper, aluminium 197 x 81 x 13 cm

Page 6-7 Difference, 2014 Mild steel, rusting and polished wall 300 x 16 x 9 cm floor 240 x 16 x 3 cm Page 9 Unframeable, 2020 Paper, pencil, graphite paste and plastic 200 x 80 x 80 cm

Page 10-11 Unframed, 2019 Paper, pencil, graphite paste and plastic Each 200 x 80 x 80 cm No walls, 2019 Paper and pencil Each roll 170 x 20 x 20 cm Variations on a theme in red, 2019 Paper Each 200 x 56 x 10 cm (only one in view) Page 12 Variations on a theme in red, 2019 Paper Each 200 x 56 x 10 cm No walls, 2019 Paper and pencil Each roll 170 x 20 x 20 cm

Page 13 Unframed, 2019 Paper, pencil, graphite paste and plastic Each 200 x 80 x 80 cm Page 14-15 Variations on a theme in red, 2019 Paper Each 200 x 56 x 10 cm

Page 16-19 Same, 2014 Steel, polished and rusting, 2 sets of 9 lengths, wall and floor each set 29 x 100 x 3 cm

Page 20-23 One Red, 2015 Glass, red pigment, water, steel 1058 x 32 x 8 cm

Page 24-25 Seeing straight III, 2021 Paper, glass and aluminium 150 x 49 x 2 cm

Page 27 Seeing straight, 2016 Paper, glass and aluminium 250 x 58.5 x 3 cm

Page 28-31 Difference, 2014 Mild steel, rusting and polished wall 300 x 16 x 9 cm floor 240 x 16 x 3 cm

Page 32-33 Borderlines, 2017 Paper, pencil and steel 170 x 175 x 32cm

Page 34-35 Variations in red, 2020 Paper, aluminium 197 x 81 x 13cm

Page 36-37 No walls, 2019 Paper and pencil Each roll 170 x 20 x 20 cm

Page 38-39 Arrested State, 2018 Charred redwood, aluminium, mdf and paint 86 x 126 x 64 cm

Back Cover Drawn Out, 2021 Paper, graphite, aluminium 83 x 77 x 13 cm

LUCINDA BURGESS info@lucindaburgess.plus.com www.lucindaburgess.com @lucinda.burgess