Tom Burr was born on 1963 in New Haven, Lives and works in New York. Conceptually oriented artists tend to be either obsessed or dismissive towards the objects they use. In most cases somebody else produces the work for them using standard industrial materials. The function of these objects is often descriptive, illustrating of a set of ideas expressed more accurately by textual means. The ideological value of the present or absent texts is mainly to justify the uninteresting objects in their expository function which are as quickly to be interchangeable as produced.

This explains why artists who pursue these strategies run the easy risk of ending up arrogant, cynical, arbitrary and formalist in their object choice and presentation. To be informed by an analytical and critical approach often doesn't change this trap. Previous shows by AFA and others have exemplified these failures.

A more satisfying relationship between text and objects is "staged" right now with the works of Tom Burr. Very well written texts address the social, architectural, and psychological space of the fluorescent, mirrored 42nd street milieu that one finds all over the "peep showed" world. The short instructive texts ("blue movies", "blue laws", "peep scumatrium" ...) open up a rich conceptual parenthesis which the artist filled with a series of uncompleted light interior short hand architecture in varying sizes.

These wooden models fulfill in their simplicity not just the function of restaging these more masculine interior worlds (i. e. a very psychological environment of unfulfilled canned desires), but also play with the vocabulary of minimal art. The game with minimalism is very hot these days but only few know how to play this card that most artists fail at completely.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2006

• The Eighth Square, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
• The Name of This Show Is Not GAY ART NOW, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, curated by Jack Pierson
• Warum etwas zeigen, was man sehen kann, Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig

2005

• HaubrokShows. B Sharp, Xantener Strasse 7, Berlin
• Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After Modernism, Queens Museum of Art, New York
• Nolens Volens, Galerie Neu, Berlin
• EXILE New York is a good Hotel, Broadway 1602, New York
• Residence, MICA Foundation, New York
2004

• Trafic d’influence: Art & Design, Collection Frac Nord Pas-de-Calais, Dunkerque
• Election, American Fine Art, Colin de Land Fine Art, New York
• When the lights go out…, Cohan & Leslie, New York
• The Future Has a Silver Lining, Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich
• Braunschweig Parcours 2004, Braunschweig
• Whitney Biennial 2004, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Beginning Here: 101 Ways, Visual Arts Gallery, New York
• Strange Weather, Modern Art, London
• It’s all an Illusion, Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich
• Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

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