For the New York-based abstract painter Tom Burckhardt the idea of absurdity has been a compelling point of departure which has led him to push and question the very integrity of a painting as an object. Many of Burckhardt’s recent works have been executed on cast plastic made from molds crafted by the artist giving him a quasi-standardized though slightly uneven object to paint upon. Burckhardt’s abstractions are amalgamations of dissociative forms, colors or patterns forced into a given matrix and left to coexist in this tenuous community of various visual vocabularies. In fact the opportunity for play extends beyond the picture plane as the artist goes so far as to paint tacks along the stretcher side and even the stretcher bars on the verso of the works further pushing the boundaries of painting and sculpture. The works are always at play much as the artist is always at play with them in the studio and hopes that the viewer’s interlocutor will also join in this painterly paradox of contradictory commentaries.
Son of the photographer Rudy Burckhardt and painter Yvonne Jacquette, Tom Burckhardt was born 1964 in New York where he still currently resides and works alongside his partner the ceramist Kathy Butterly. He is the recipient of many notable grants and awards including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, two Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grants, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters.
