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Jon Burgerman (b. 1979 UK) is a New York-based British artist whose works have been acquired by prestigious public collections such as London's Victoria and Albert Museum and the OÖ-Kultur museum in Linz, Austria. His art has been described as “bright, and intuitive, focused on the visceral energy of play as a tenet of communication” (Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, July 2021). In recent years he has exhibited at WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong), Chengdu Times Art Museum (China), MISA Art fair Berlin and Cologne, Ojiri Gallery (London), L21 Gallery (Spain), Dopeness Art Lab (Taipei) and Jane Lombard Gallery (New York).

Burgerman’s highly distinctive fuzzy-edged characters epitomise the paradoxes of contemporary life. Their seemingly simple googly eyes betray a range of emotional complexities and anxieties, with comically distressed expressions and collapsing forms underlined by titles such as Xanax, Dualist, Lexapro and Chameleon (2022).

Expressing creativity and having fun is key to Burgerman’s practice. It's his belief that simple creative acts can allow people to change not only their world but the world around them.

Burgerman's artistic influences include early 20th century animation, Abstract Expressionism, the CoBrA movement, Art Brut and Pop Art. He encourages the viewer to look at the world in new and unexpected ways. It's his belief that simple creative acts can allow people to change not only their world but the world around them.

Artist statement:

I create playful and humorous paintings and objects that cloak a collective anxiety about the turbulent world we live in.

Soft friendly shapes and bold colours interplay to create compositions that display an aesthetic joy but belie conflicting emotions beneath the surface. Vivid expressions of abstracted cartoon forms are utilised as key components of the compositions; the amorphous genderless masses are stacked, piled, squashed and delicately balanced, often moments away from potential collapse or complete evaporation.

The use of aerosol paint allows for fluid and spontaneous creation, allowing for a loose, improvisational quality to the pieces.

The paintings are often in conflict with themselves; at once tough and soft, friendly and scary, happy and sad. The characters in the works have cubistic personalities, with their various emotional states shared on a single plain. These relate to a generational mental health crisis, exasperated by climate anxiety, the pandemic, the narrowing of political choice and financial insecurity.

Despite the fraught intensions, the light and colourful nature of the works offer a positive wider outlook and that there is always the chance for hope and joy, or at least, that's how I ultimately feel when making the works.

Selected Exhibitions:

2017

  • Instagram group exhibition, Tate Modern, London, UK

2019

  • Solo show 'Fun Factory', M Contemporary Museum, Seoul, Korea

2021

  • Group show 'Can’t Wait To Meet You', Primary, Miami, USA
  • Group show 'Caterpillar', Galerie Silka, Lyon, France
  • Solo show 'Eye Candy', Praise Shadows, Boston, USA
  • ARCO Madrid art fair, L21 Gallery booth, Madrid, Spain
  • Solo booth, Urban Break art fair, Seoul, Korea
  • Group show 'Summer Camp', GR Gallery, Manhattan, NY, USA
  • MISA Art fair, König Galerie, Berlin, Germany
  • Solo presentation 'Fuzzy Faces', Thinkspace, LA
  • Group show, NFTism: No Fear in Trying, curated by Kenny Schachter, Institut, Unit, London, UK
  • Group show 'Badass', Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Art Taipei fair booth with Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, Taiwan
  • MISA Art fair, König Galerie, Cologne, Germany
  • Solo show 'Face Time', Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, Taiwan

2022

  • Solo show 'Hot Spot', Ojiri Gallery, London
  • Solo show 'New Friends', WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong
  • BAMA art fair, Busan, Korea
  • Group show 'Vision X' at Chengdu Times Art Museum, China
  • Group show 'Punchline', Jane Lombard Gallery, New York
  • Solo show 'Group Therapy', WOAW gallery, China
  • Group show, L21 Gallery, Palma, Spain
  • Solo show 'No Hard Feelings', Galerie Slika, Lyon, France
  • Solo show collaboration with Sesame Street, Harbour City, Hong Kong

2023

  • SG Art Fair, Singapore with WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong
  • Group show 'Search Party', Tatjana Pieters, Belgium
  • Taipei Dangdai Art Fair with WOAW Gallery, Taipei
  • Solo show 'Sim City', Omni Gallery, London
  • Group show 'Dream Paper 2', Galerie Slika, Lyon, France
  • Group show 'The Cuteness Factor', Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary
  • Solo show 'Feel the Heat', WOAW Gallery, Singapore
  • Art Taipei fair booth with Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Group show 'Eat Me!", Trotter & Sholer, New York
  • Group show 'Brand New Second Hand', Ojiri Gallery, London
  • Group show 'Daily Face', Galerie Slika, Lyon, France

2024

  • Group show, works on paper, 'Liaison', Better Go South, Germany
  • Group show 'Meshuganah', A Very Serious Gallery, Chicago
  • Group show 'Crossing Boundaries: Contemporary Figurative Perspectives', Tang Contemporary, Hong Kong
  • Solo show 'Family' Dopeness Art Lab, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Solo show 'The Great Escape', Better Go South, Berlin
  • Solo show 'Cradle' Hunted Projects, Edinburgh, Scotland