A Mille-fuille

Jess Burgess

Oil, acrylic on linen 49cm x 39cm (unframed)

Fashion magazine imagery in contrast with delicious summer dessert. Jess Burgess challenges the notion of beauty culture.

£650.00
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Artwork description

‘A Mille-fuille’ combines the previously disassociated images of the female figure, the bright blue sky and other abstracted structures. Influences from Alex Katz and Brian Calvin’s figurative works are seen here together with the personal experiences and emotions that come with the cooling of summer. Burgess also draws much inspiration from the world of fashion as she uses snapshots of designer pieces from social media, and makes the experience of shopping for them more attainable with the act of applying paint to canvas. While the edges of each image frames its adjacent neighbor, it emphasizes the painting’s construction. And while the hidden gaze of the woman strengthens this structure, the gaze of the viewer, peeping into the structure, deconstructs it all over again.

Jess Burgess

Jess Burgess is a British artist based in the UK specializing in oil and acrylic paintings. Burgess received her BA and MA in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts. Her works explore the idea of the virtual window to reality that has been created for us in a world saturated with screens and digital images. Burgess merges traditional painterly techniques and compositions of everyday activities with influences of technology and the digital age in order to portray a contemporary perspective of the world. Similar to the ‘Merge Visible’ action in photoshop, her works include a collage of disparate layers that are flattened together to make a unified image, yet, done through painting. This creates a viewpoint that questions the end of one image and the beginning of the next, which disrupts the pictorial composition while simultaneously merging engaging and relatable images. These frames within her works, that are used as structural skeletons to the compositions, are eventually punctured by the gazes of the viewer and of the figure in the painting.

Exhibition History:

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2020 Bread and a Girl, Fairhurst Gallery, Norwich (postponed until further notice)

Group Exhibitions

2021
  • Forthcoming: Cley 20 nowhere, Curated by Amanda Geitner, North Norfolk
2020 
  • 3., Crypt Gallery, Norwich
2019
  • Greggs or Greta? Artists Reflect on 2019 The Auction Collective, The Menier Gallery, London
  • Sir John Hurt Art Prize, Holt Festival, Holt (Shortlisted)
  • At the End of Lines, Original Projects, Great Yarmouth
  • AucArt Lab, curated by George Barker, AucArt, London
  • Two Lives in Colour, East Gallery, Norwich
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