Over Under --- Building on Building

XYandZ is proud to present Building on Building, an exhibition of new works by New York based artist Erik Burke. Burke, who works primarily on the street under the name Over Under, is an artist focused on bringing art from the pedestal to the people. But, in the process has realized you can't do it if you set out to do it. So in order to make art a part of every one's daily life Burke has had to make art a part of his everyday experience.

Burke’s more recent portraits are modern reflections of the city itself. Using spray paint on thin and inexpensive paper, he creates figures restricted in architectural imagery where anonymous limbs jut out of doors, windows, and storefront gates. His masked figures, characterized by talking doors and winking windows, express the comforts in shelter, while also highlighting the restrictive nature of our built landscape. These works on paper return full circle as he pastes the paintings on the very buildings that were their inspiration.

Giving the work over to the street, and letting go of ownership, has given his portraits a new life and purpose unachievable in the controlled spaces of the studio or the gallery. As his works weather and age, accumulate tags and tears, or disappear altogether, the fate of the art becomes the art.

However this new body of work faces an inevitable dilemma. When moved into the gallery how does one show the same work without all the personality of an always changing, fading, tearing, and smudging backdrop? His answer, move the backdrop to the forefront.

In these new works on paper, Burke creates mash-ups of the NYC everyday with glowing detail. He samples pieces of architecture, actual graffiti, and ornamentation, then stacks them into physically impossible totem poles. The structures mimic the dense look and feel of a contemporary metropolis, yet seem altogether out of this world. Limbs occasionally appear out of windows but even without their presence the buildings become anthropomorphic. The work may regard the truth but its strength comes from fabricating beautiful lies.