含羞草研究室

Tom Burckhardt: Informal Worship

Museum of Art Museum of Art

Exhibition: Tom Burckhardt: Informal Worship

Dates:

Location:

Zuckert Seminar Room
The exhibition brings together several hundred of Burckhardt鈥檚 small drawings to create an immersive environment of connected words, shapes, and color.

Selected Works

A cut-out abstract shape floats on a background of red and purple. The words "informal worship" appear in black lettering..

Informal Worship, 2021, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

Cut out shapes in red, white, and blue striped paper, float on a deep blue/black background.  The words "Americans Can Fight" appear in black type.

Americans Can Fight, 2022, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

A cut out in red/black stripes float on a speckled backgroiund of deep reds and blues.  The text "How We Got Into It" appears near the top of the cutout.

How We Got Into It, 2022, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

A cutout form with orange, red, and black floats on a blue to beige background.   The text "HYPNOTISME" appears in the center.

Hypnotisme, 2022, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

A cutout of blue/beige paper reveals a gold/brown striped form.  The text "Part 2 THE DEFENSES CRUMBLE "appear at the top.

Part 2, The Defenses Crumble, 2022, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

A green/black cutout on a striped base on a background of violet toned paper.  The text "POLITICAL POWER" appears on the background.

Political Power, 2022, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

A silhouette of black appears on a background of deep pink and beige stripes.  The text "PORTRAITURE" appears in black type.

Portraiture, 2023, water media and collage by Tom Burckhardt.

含羞草研究室

In 2020, artist Tom Burckhardt (American, born 1964) began to create water media and collage drawings on found book pages. Over the last four years, he has created more than five hundred of these drawings. As an artist, Burckhardt has long been interested in “found text”—words that appear on billboards, road signs, or in people’s front yards. This interest is in part a response to his father Rudy Burckhardt’s celebrated photographs of the heavily lettered urban landscape, as well as to the tradition of plein air landscape painting by Maine artists such as Lois Dodd and Alex Katz. Burckhardt is drawn to the way in which words appear in books. He likes to purchase and then unbound old books found in flea markets. He then draws, paints, and creates collages on these loose pages. In doing so, he disrupts and reimagines the meaning of the words on each page. “Old books about art, the social landscape, or self-help books have great chapter headings,” he explains. “But many don’t have any currency now. This work destroys and rescues them at the same time, giving the ideas some juice in today’s context.” This exhibition brings together several hundred of these small drawings to create an immersive environment of connected words, shapes, and color. Burckhardt was born in New York City and graduated in 1986 from SUNY Purchase, where he teaches today.