Jon Burgerman’s artworks have featured at The V&A, Tate Modern and The White House, now OMNI will show his playful pop art.
Sim City is a collection of maximalist, highly saturated works in Burgerman’s iconic visual language. Featuring eight large new aerosol paintings on canvas alongside 19 works on paper and an eye-bleeding immersive video installation. Burgerman’s instantly distinctive characters feel freshly painted, suggesting overpopulated urban environments, where space is at a premium and the characters vie for attention. Displaying a wide spectrum of emotions across their inhabitants, the seemingly upbeat compositions propose that despite the need for company and to be recognised, many of the forms are disconnected and even isolated.
This striking collection, created at the start of the year, is influenced by a wide range of artists and movements, including the jazzy compositions of Stuart Davis, the playfulness of expression of Jean Dubuffet and the loose gestural mark making of Cy Twombly, particularly in the dryly titled ‘Cry Twombly’, 2023. Animation and 90’s video games also strike inspiration for Burgerman, as evidenced in the smeared facial expressions (smearing images is a technique to suggest movement in animation) and flat 2D plains that make up each composition, such as in ‘Parklife’, 2023 and ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, 2023. The title Sim City is a reference to the seminal 1990’s city building simulator game of the same name by Will Wright. Burgerman considers parallels between game playing and world building with art making and to the simulations we necessitate for ourselves in our everyday lives.
“I want to make expressive and open works, where the viewer can not only play with narrative strands suggested by the characters and forms, but also emotionally connect with the textures, colours and very fabric of the painting itself.” – Jon Burgerman
His exuberant, childlike works have made their way into the public collections of institutions such as The Science Museum, The Tate Modern and The Victoria and Albert in London. Even the walls of The White House feature his work and his mother has the framed thank you letter from Joe Biden in her house to prove it.
With work that treads the line between fine and urban art and pop culture, his zeitgeist vision has seen him collaborate with brands including Apple, Levi’s, Samsung, Pepsi, Snapchat, Instagram, and Nike. Meanwhile, Burgerman’s wacky series of online gifs that have been viewed over nine billion times. Now it’s the turn of OMNI, London’s new cutting-edge art space to present the artist’s work in the UK with an arresting series of new paintings and mischievous video installations.
Jon Burgerman’s Sim City will run until 27 April at OMNI
56-57 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EG.
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10am-6pm.
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10am-6pm.
www.omnigallery.com | @omnigallery | @jonburgerman