Benjamin Burkard
05.09.2025 - 25.10.2025
Flüsterscherben
gallery . mühlfeld + stohrer
Benjamin Burkard "Flüsterscherben" Burkard's painting searches for entanglements and condensations between the past and contemporary points of view. Where are the rhymes with the past to be found and where are the unevennesses for the future to be found? What position do deeply rooted things such as culture, identity or tradition have in our dynamic and thoroughly technologized society?
To address these issues, the painter uses a specially developed painting technique inspired by traditional gold ground painting from the Middle Ages. The basic color nuance on which he builds the painting and color composition is always gold, silver or copper - the basic nuances of an often ancient history. He partially paints over these elements, scratches components free, etches them away, or overlays the layers of color to the point of an encounter with realism. A realism that is itself broken by digitality and grows into a symbiosis of painted, concrete color elements, the pixel.
"(...) Benjamin Burkard's painterly position can be described as a form of abstracting figuration - or as figurative abstraction, or as something in between. His art has references to the historical avant-garde movements and currents of Symbolism, Surrealism and Art Informel, without the artist being labeled a Symbolist, Surrealist or Informalist. However, the Symbolists also interpreted the external appearances of reality as symbols for something "behind" that is not visible and cannot be scientifically researched, but can only be subjectively experienced. The surrealists influenced by them believe in a "higher" reality that contains elements of dreams, the irrational, the absurd and chance. In order to bring images from the unconscious to light, they, like Burkard, used the method of combinatorics and developed various procedures to incorporate chance into the creation of images. Finally, the first abstract layers of paint over the primer, the gestural-abstract areas on the surfaces and the open and processual concept of the picture are reminiscent of Art Informel. It is the highly original synthesis of figurative and abstract pictorial elements in conjunction with an innovative technique that makes Benjamin Burkard's painting stand out within contemporary art and at the same time proves it to be highly compatible with it." - Prof. Dr. Christoph Zuschlag on Benjamin Burkard, from the current catalog "Schimmerschwund" -
gallery . mühlfeld + stohrer
Fahrgasse 27
60311 Frankfurt am Main
T. +49 172 657 90 73
E. muehlfeld-stohrer@web.de