Loom Gallery
Artissima 2016

Andreas Burger’s works analyse notions of the individ- ual and his identity in relation to the everyday.
Using a reverse creative process, Burger focuses on an archetypal individual whose unique traits gradually disappear as the artist strips him down to his basics, reducing him to a faceless mass. The resulting pieces are a series of clay sculptures grouped as a site-spe- ci c work.
The twenty busts of this cycle all derive from the same mold. The starting point of this process is a polysty- reneblockofcm.36x49x28,inwhichtheshapeofa bust is excavated. The resulting cast is then lled with plaster. When the plaster hardens the bust is freed by breaking it polystyrene. The broken pieces of the whole cast are again reassembled to cast the next bust. At each new casting the mold disintegrates and loses more and more its original shape. Over the polystyrene mold decreases, the more increases the volume of the next bust of plaster. In this way the torso is distancing itself more from its main aspect, creating more and more abstract forms to become a box.
Meanwhile, a series of works on paper take their cue from a German lottery game called 6 aus 49, in which each card is marked with different numbers - the date and a number corresponding to the earnings won. The concept and the identity of the works are the same, but the hypothetical value between one work and the next one vary, becoming the subject of the work itself.
The installation Berliner Regenbogen (Berlin Rainbow) is composed of a sculpture, an arc of seven shades of grey, and two monochrome paintings on wood: the lighter of the two is derived from the sum of the seven shades of grey, while the darker one is, unexpectedly, the sum of the seven colours of a real rainbow.
The last work is the reproduction of a fragment of a chess board, universally recognised as having 64 squares. With this work, the artist attempts to offer an exit strategy, or a means of escape, to chess players who nd themselves in trouble during a hypothetical game.