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Jon Burgerman’s instantly recognisable art has been exhibited all over the world from art fairs, galleries to museums to even the White House. His works are held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and his digital work was acquired by the OÖ-Kultur museum in Linz, Austria. In 2022 he has exhibited at WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong), Chengdu Times Art Museum (China), MISA Art fair Berlin and Cologne, Ojiri Gallery (London), Dopeness Art Lab (Taipei) and Jane Lombard Gallery (New York).

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.

He creates work in a wide variety of media from paint, aerosols, digital and moving image. Online his gifs have been viewed over 9.5bn times. He has collaborated with brands including Apple, Samsung, Pepsi, Lotte, Snapchat, Instagram and Nike. Previously he’s made vinyl collectable toys, picture books, apparel, fabric collections, inflatables, homeware, sportswear, underwear and many other things.

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.

Artist statement:

I make paintings about people and their emotional complexities. How they feel when isolated or collated is explored, a core contradiction being one of community verses individualism.

Soft shapes and bold colours interplay to create intoxicating compositions that on the surface display a visual freedom and aesthetic joy but belie fraught conflicting feelings beneath the surface. Vivid expressions, of abstracted cartoon forms, are utilised as key components of the compositions; amorphous masses are stacked, piled, squashed and delicately balanced, often moments away from potential collapse.

A sense of synesthesia guides me to make intuitive choices when working. Colours dance and create memorable visual melodies, a continuum of Miró and Kandinsky, albeit to a rhythm often informed by contemporary electronic music. I believe the works must perform satisfactorily to both eye and ear.

The use of aerosol allows for fluid and spontaneous creation, a painting tool that can be applied as quickly as my imagination dictates. There is a improvisational quality to the pieces, charged with the unabashed gleeful pleasure the act of creativity supplies. Amongst the hazy clouds of colour, rough impasto marks are gesturally applied with chunky oil bars, channeling Cy Twombly's freeform scrawls and the graffiti I regularly see daubed around the streets in Brooklyn.

The paintings hold through a balance of contrasts, emotional ups and downs paired against crude, brutal marks and sensitive, forgiving forms. They are at once tough and soft, friendly and scary, happy and sad. Their cubistic personalities, with various sides shared on a single plain, relate directly to a generational mental health crisis, exasperated by climate anxiety, the pandemic, the narrowing of political choice and financial insecurity. And yet, there is always an elastic resilience, a wry smile, joy in the process and chance of hope.

Selected Exhibitions:

2009

  • Solo show 'Economies of Scale', Deshan Art Space, Beijing, China

2010

  • Group show, 'Back to Black', Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
  • Group show 'Street Art in Print' at V&A Museum, London and touring across the UK until 2012

2011

  • Papering Over The Cracks, installation at the Castle Museum, Nottingham, UK

2013

  • Group show 'On!', CAC Museum, Cincinnati, USA
  • Solo show 'Racing Lines', Southbank Centre, London, UK

2015

  • Solo show 'Burgerworld', LOTTE Art Space, Seoul, Korea

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