schlagen und bleiben
Blain|Southern London
Jonas Burgert, mit mir, 2018, Photo: Gunther Lepkowski
schlagen und bleiben is the first exhibition to focus solely on Jonas Burgert’s drawings as an independent body of work. Known predominantly for intensely coloured, lifesize figurative paintings, the exhibition places emphasis on the intricacy of the artist’s character studies in black and white.
Densely populated tableaux are how Burgert explores non-linear storytelling. Often created at the same time as these expansive pictorial dramas, the subjects of his individual portraits are exiles from the main story, isolated within their own frame. This exhibition explores Burgert’s portraits as entities in their own right. Untethered from a central narrative, they become newly enigmatic, each alluding to its own particular mysteries.
Burgert is interested in the personification of psychology through figurative painting and it is his ongoing close observation of human emotion that gives his characters such a potent charge.
