Javier Gonzalez Burgos: Camouflage

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Nothing At All, a newly launched art space situated in the art hub of Central and Tai Ping Shan Street, is officially open on 11 June 2022. Having garnered enormous support and media attention of its debut exhibition, “Red Girl”, with Skolyshev Vladimir, Nothing At All is delighted to present a following solo exhibition entitled Camouflage by Argentinian artist Javier Gonzalez Burgos on view from 21 July to 20 August 2022, marking the artist’s solo debut in Hong Kong. The exhibition features his latest series which explores topics of animals and humankind through an unseen perspective.

Born in the third-most populated city Rosario in 1974, Javier Gonzalez Burgos is an Argentinian artist who had later spent a long time living in the capital Buenos Aires and is currently staying in Spain. Back in his college days, he studied in Graphic Design and Audio-visual Production where he was influenced and inspired by the ambiguous, abstract, and intense visual art style conceived by artists such as the American most significant graphic designer David Carson and Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai, as demonstrated in the Ray Gun magazine designed by Carson and Wong’s directed films respectively.

Born with an artistic instinct, Burgos’ creation has been driven by inspirations from his surroundings since a very young age. He once created a cover image with sole imagination for a cassette album released by the famous British punk band Sex Pistols in 1977, and even designed music festival posters for some bands he came across in the monograph Punk: La muerte joven. Burgos is a big fan of punk as well as the popular culture icons; these two elements constantly coincided and worked wonders in his early works, for example, he painted Disney characters with a wicked smile and uneasy body gestures inspired by the punk culture, as well as the fast-food chain Wendy’s restaurants with surrealistic invasion of insects. His early works were appreciated by the audiences of his home city’s national museum; they reflect the obsession of Burgos in observing everyday life and his emphasis on personal perspective and interpretation through cheerful cartoonish characters.

As a contemporary artist, Burgos has been more recognized for his identity of a well-known illustrator for children’s picture books, who has produced over 120 children’s storybooks and fairy tales in the past decade. Witty and dreamy, somehow melancholic yet truthful, his works speak for his personalities and are globally received; they were published and exhibited across the continents of Europe, America and Asia in US, France, UK, mainland China and Hong Kong etc. At first sight of the first children’s book he collected in early 2000s, Burgos is not only interested in the flawless and enchanting appearances of these fictional characters shaped by their authors, but more importantly, which is what encouraged him to become an illustrator later, he is intrigued by this “imposed flawlessness” that seems to him is a disguise. Envisioning to present his characters in multiple mediums and dimensions, he describes them as tranquil landscapes when they are in the form of paintings in galleries, and as multisensory aesthetic stimulations in the form of six-feet-tall sculptures.

His unique style is defined by lone and emotional subjects – usually are children disguising themselves as animals or objects, minimal compositions, and bold themes. His works could be slightly undistinguishable from those of the prominent contemporary artists in the first place, however, they strike with a significant uniqueness when one takes a further look and spots the sophisticated story structure and the depth of the characters. From his childlike images embedded with a keen sense of visual storytelling, to the emotional details bore by those pairs of piercing eyes, Burgos endeavours to arrange the framework of the story to perfection and depict his characters as real-life stage performers showered in imitated spotlights, thus increasing the tension within and outside the canvas, and creating interactions between the works and the viewers, which demonstrate his mastery of story illustration.
Pervaded with innocence and cuteness, Burgos’ works grasp the essence and develop from the characteristics of children as well as animals. The children’s disguise with animal-like appearances is planned and manipulative, alluding to how he conceals the truth with unreal tales and fables, or simply a plain, single colour background.

Entitled Camouflage, which means one of the most intelligent and merciful self-defense mechanisms of some species on the Earth referring to their ability of blending into their environment by concealing their coloration, this exhibition reveals the artist’s deep contemplation on the vulnerability of humankind and their constant self-suppression to fit in with the others through an intangible and indecipherable “camouflage”. Through the usage of specific colour tones in painting the background, Burgos injects intimidating pessimism into his works, as if depicting the sky before a storm. Such practice intensifies the contrast in his paintings by imbuing a satirical feeling to the otherwise humourous and dramatic scenes, and further creates a heightened excitement as it foreshadows some kinds of revelation from the absolute silence.

As illustrated in Burgos’ artworks, we are evoked to face the fact that every living species is constantly forced to adapt to the fast-changing environment resulting from rapid development, and eventually eliminates all their traits and remains as an empty shell same as every other creature. Pondering on these conflicts brought by development, Burgos makes a playful statement with the concept of “camouflage” and leaves the question of whether the humans or animals are the true disguise hanging. In this exhibition, his latest series of fifteen unique pieces resonating with the theme of “camouflage” will be presented alongside a limited-edition sculpture compatible with the theme, whose priority of purchase will be given to collectors of the unique paintings. It is undoubtedly one of the must-visit exhibitions of the year.