Gerardo Burmester
Portugal
Gerardo Burmester was born in Porto (1953), where he still lives and works. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Porto. From 1975-78 he lived and worked in Paris.
He began to present his work in the second half of the 1970s, developing various performative actions and creating a pictorial oeuvre that combines neo-romantic references with an ironic critique of the state of painting and its themes in the Portuguese and international situation of the time.
He was a member of the Puzzle group and, together with Albuquerque Mendes, founded and directed Espaço Lusitano in Porto in 1982. At the end of the 1980s, his work began to use objects and spatial installations as proposals for a theatre of reinvented places, bringing the viewer closer and further away in games of visual seduction, both attractive and cold in the untouchable perfectionism of the materials used: veneered wood, polished aluminium, industrial felt.
The artist is currently presenting a series of coloured, polished aluminium elements whose volumes mark out the site in a way that both reflects the viewer's image and underlines the viewer's exteriority in relation to their orientation in the space. Pieces of considerable size highlight another new element of research: acrylic and its potential 'transparencies'.
He began to present his work in the second half of the 1970s, developing various performative actions and creating a pictorial oeuvre that combines neo-romantic references with an ironic critique of the state of painting and its themes in the Portuguese and international situation of the time.
He was a member of the Puzzle group and, together with Albuquerque Mendes, founded and directed Espaço Lusitano in Porto in 1982. At the end of the 1980s, his work began to use objects and spatial installations as proposals for a theatre of reinvented places, bringing the viewer closer and further away in games of visual seduction, both attractive and cold in the untouchable perfectionism of the materials used: veneered wood, polished aluminium, industrial felt.
The artist is currently presenting a series of coloured, polished aluminium elements whose volumes mark out the site in a way that both reflects the viewer's image and underlines the viewer's exteriority in relation to their orientation in the space. Pieces of considerable size highlight another new element of research: acrylic and its potential 'transparencies'.
