Roq
La Rue is pleased to present a solo exhibition by emerging San
Francisco artist Robert Burden. Burden paints the action figures taken
from his youth, in large scale formats and epic atmospheres. These
large canvases are covered in baroque-like patterning and gilt framing,
and a small box containing the actual toy accompanies each piece
(referred to by Robert as a "reliquary" of sorts.)
Thinking
back on the toys he played with when young, Burden remembered them as
being wonderful, almost magical things, magnificent, powerful, and
beautiful. As an adult Burden found a box of these old toys and found
them to be nothing more than cheap, mass produced plastic. The
nebulousness of what can take a cheap yet coveted piece of plastic and
turn it into an almost talismanic object for a kid inspired Burden as
well as the amorphous line that is drawn between imagination
and
reality, childhood wonder and adult practicality. He created a series
of paintings based on these toys, acting almost as a funerary
commemoration to the powerful force of imagination and how things are
perceived before boundaries can be placed on them. While trying to
express the now faded feelings of awe he had as a child, he is
careful
to keep the truth of what the toy is in his work, rather than imbuing
its physicality with anything extra.
The
patterns that swirl around each piece are often taken from wallpaper
patterns or decorated fabrics from his childhood home. Offsetting the
masculinity of the toys, which are mostly “battle” themed, the feminine
patterning is meant to be testaments to the domestic realm in which
battles and wars were perceived as something fun and easily put away,
rather than the horrible reality they actually are. The juxtaposition
of these two themes adds an intended irony to the subject
matter.
Artist's Statement
Given
the vast amount of action figures in the world, I needed some way to
narrow down the subject matter. I will only to depict action
figures
that I had as a kid, or toys that I really coveted as a kid.
People
have occasionally given me suggestions of toys that I should paint, and
sometimes I love their suggestions, and actually consider them for
future projects, but if I can't recall the toys that they are speaking
of, or I can't recall ever really wanting them, then I'm not going to
paint it. Some people have asked me when Optimus Prime is
going to be
done, but truth be told, and blasphemy to some pop-culture
geeks, I'm
one of the few kids who grew up in the 80's that didn't really see
anything all that cool
about a tractor-trailer that turns into a
humanoid robot.
So I begin with a
figure that I loved as a
kid. Then I begin to think of a
composition/pattern. I want the
pattern to somehow inform what is going on in the painting.
In the
Battle Cat painting, the toy is wonderfully expressive, and considering
it is a small object with no moving parts, there is a
surprising amount
of of movement to it. So I chose a pattern that flowed with
the Cat.
Like waves, pushing the viewer from left to right. I'm hoping
that
there is an energy to the piece. Sometimes people don't think
certain
patterns totally work, like the 'Foot Soldier'. The
foot soldier's
were pretty expendable and disposable. There were
hundreds of them,
thousands of them, and they were all fairly useless when it came to
accomplishing anything that they were supposed to. They were
pansies, I suppose. So I used a pattern of
simple daisies falling
softly on the canvas. This pattern doesn't glorify
the toy in the same
baroque heroic fashion that the patterns accomplish
in other paintings
(Serpentor, Sword of Jafar), but it seems to make sense with the toy
itself.
Often,
it will take me longer to paint the patterns than the
actual toys (Riddler, Stargate).
The
patterns are also a testament to the domestic realm. These
toys were
played with in domestic spaces, whether it be my home as a kid, or a
friend's home. The juxtaposition of the comforting, often
motherly
patterns, with the uber-machismo of these action figures is important
to the work. The patterns both glorify and subvert
the absurd
masculine stereotypes that are found in these toys.
I don't want it to
just be a glorification, I want there to be an irony as well.
I've
often used patterns that were actually from my home as a kid. The
pattern in the shadow-boxes which contain the actual toys, are almost
always wallpaper samples from my parents home. Occasionally I
will use
a mirror in the background of the shadow-boxes (Snowman of Hook
Mountain), and occasionally I will use a pattern from a fabric shop
that I just think works really well in the
painting (Krang).
The
"toyness" is important to me. I want the painted depiction of
the toy
to be better than the real object, but I still definitely
want the
painting to maintain the sense that this is a toy,
that this is a
commodity. Because this is about the glorification of the
commodity.
It's a commodity-driven culture, and a consumer-based
culture. Anyone
could make the argument that consumerism is North America's predominant
religion, or predominant opiate of the masses. If it's not
comsumerism, then it's film and television that are the cultural
staples or opiates of choice. This is also why it's
important for me to
display the toy with the painting, it's like some kind of Saint's
reliquary. It's an ironic devotional device. I'm
glorifying the
pop-culture, I loved the pop-culture, but I want to also depict the
consumerist disposability of that same culture. I see, and
love, the
irony of spending hundreds of hours, and a great deal of my money (too
much of my money!), in order to make a
single object in honor of
something that was cheaply mass-produced for millions of
people. It's
kind of Warholian, I guess, but I have a much greater affinity
for GI
Joe than I do for Campbell's Soup.
-Robert
Burden
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