Jonas Burgert

Jonas Burgert Salvage II 2006 Oil on canvas 240 x 210 cm. Signed on the reverse of the canvas 'JONAS BURGERT' and signed, dated and titled '- Salvage II - 2006 Jonas Burgert'. Daniel Schreiber (ed.), Jonas Burgert, Lebendversuch, Ausst.Kat. Kunsthalle Tübingen u.a., Cologne 2011, WVZ-Nr.28 Provenance Produzentengalerie, Hamburg (with label on reverse); Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin (with label on reverse); Sotheby's, London, Oct. 04, 2019, lot 167; private collection, Switzerland. Exhibitions Denver 2008 (University of Denver, Victoria H. Myhren Gallery), Jonas Burgert, Enigmatic Narrative. The large-scale second painting in the group of works entitled "Salvage," from which another painting is offered in this auction as Lot 27, offers a stage-like setting with its rich personnel and multi-layered spatial situations that is characteristic of Jonas Burgert's oeuvre. "Burgert's characteristic figurative imagery appears in the tradition of a great world theater, though as a malender demiurge, the 'play director' Burgert seems to prefer tragedy to comedy. Incessantly, his personnel, acting in distorted dimensions, pursue a meaningless, seemingly ritualized activity, some thoughtful protagonists, perhaps out of lethargy, already retreat to the status of observers. A languid serenity dominates the scenery, an atmosphere of coolness and subdued aggression at the same time is in the air. [...] With the creation of unknown spaces in the pictorial space, which quasi as black holes refer to a fourth dimension, paths lead into the abyss of nothingness. [...] Just what goal the stoically disoriented actors are pursuing, what story is to be told here, remains uncertain. One feels abducted into a surreal fantasy world, believes oneself as a viewer in a floating dream state, in which a feeling of lost idyll drowns everything out." (Hans-Peter Wipplinger, The Painted World Theater of Jonas Burgert, in: Jonas Burgert. Lebendversuch, exhibition cat. Kunsthalle Tübingen/Kunsthalle Krems 2010/2011, p.77 f.)