Marinaro is pleased to present A Shift in the House, Lindsay Burke’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
In her new body of work, Burke presents a series of paintings in which the house is more than just a functional structure; it is, in Burke’s universe, a surrogate for the mind and body, offering a way to visualize the drama of living in the world itself.
A house is in many ways like a body. It is a vessel that is designed to provide shelter. It is a container that is carefully constructed with durability and efficiency in mind. It stands on a foundation, presents outward through its facade and is compartmentalized for purposes of privacy, order and comfort. Functioning ideally, it regulates circulation and cleanliness. But what happens when systems break down? When external pressure is applied to the house, will the facade crumble, the foundation crack, the roof deteriorate, the pipes leak? And what of the pressure contained within?
Burke’s work witnesses this change at the moment it is taking place. One house begins to fall while another is being constructed. A storm rolls in, a spill washes away. There comes a sense of movement and sound, the texture of transformation. The paintings swish, slop, gurgle, spin and loop. They breathe, they blow, and they quake.
The order of things becomes unreliable, surreal. A head becomes a house and then back again. A face becomes a clock or a pipe system. Legs, animating a spill, dance around the drain. And a broom simultaneously makes and cleans a mess in a marching like manner. The variety of household items and their chaotic misappropriation suggests the unwieldiness of occupying a human body and the mental, physical, sexual and emotional processes to which it subjects us. Perhaps the body’s fraught attempt at reintegration highlights its most elemental function, to survive the vagaries of life, rebuild, and carry on.
Attempting to convey the materiality of these processes, Burke deploys rich arrays of texture. The paintings begin with an application of absorbent ground that soaks up her acrylic experimentations. Through pouring, spraying, scraping, sanding away and then starting the process over again, the paintings are constructed and deconstructed. The resulting surfaces evoke stone, flesh, tile, hair and fluid, giving a tangible quality to Burke’s representations of both house and human.
Lindsay Burke (b. 1991) completed her BFA at The University of Iowa and her MFA at Hunter College. Burke also completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Shandaken Paint School. She has been included at exhibitions at Underdonk Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Bosse & Baum, London, UK; PARISTEXASLA, Los Angeles, CA; Martos, New York, NY; Thierry Goldberg, New York, NY; Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY; and Helena Anrather Gallery, New York, NY.