Lot 395 | puls spur stop

BURGERT, JONAS
1969 Berlin

Title: puls spur stop.
Date: 2012.
Technique: Painted bronze.
Measurement: 125 x 90 x 191,5cm.
Notation: Including base. Signed, dated and numbered on the left shoe sole: J Burgert 2012 1/5 + 2 EA.
Number: 1/5.


Provenance:
- Blain Southern, Berlin

Exhibitions:
- Stadtsparkasse Essen, 2012

Jonas Burgert lives and works in Berlin. There he studied, in 1997, as a master student with Dieter Hacker, before he was awarded a scholarship from the University of the Arts in Berlin to stay in Egypt. Today he is one of the main figures of the international art scene.

It's a tormenting sight that the viewer of Burgert's work "puls spur stop" has to face at the mercy of the enemy. Exhausted and worn out, the depicted person does not even seem to be able to crawl any further. Especially the empty, frozen gaze triggers an urge in the observer to connect with the sufferer in solidarity.

Only the proportionally exaggeratedly long fingers seem to reach forward with all remaining energy. In spite of the desperate posture, the fingers continue to reach out. Further upwards, further forwards. The much too long arms are an expression of this never ending striving forward. The short legs can't support the dull body, but the arms and the hands leave the grey concrete base and dare to move beyond the predefined border.

Burgert thus raises his arms himself to become a sculpture in a final step. The hands become an expression of resistance and rebellion. The defensive character of the hands is also underlined by the colour accents. The colour distributed on the skin of the suffering person gives the viewer the opportunity to see positive things in the almost destructive exhaustion of the figure. The figure crouches on the grey base, burnt out after an enormous creative achievement. The colour disrupts the grey on grey and thus literally pushes the creative act upon the viewer.

Burgert walks a fine line between hope and suffering in a manner typical of him. His works by no means represent hopeless situations. Rather, they always offer the viewer the opportunity to enter into an exchange with the work and, as his own personal situation demands, to understand it as an incentive or even as a warning.