O One, O None, Through the Night is Robert Burnier’s first solo exhibition in South Africa. The Chicago-based artist presents six painted aluminium wall-mounted works that function between painting and sculpture.

In Burnier’s process-oriented practice, the works, with their subtle folds showing traces of previous forms and prototypes, can be seen to be an archive of themselves. Burnier states, ‘The folded and compressed forms retain a history of their own becoming… But the work has its demands, as do I, a communion of what is within and without, to understand this sovereignty, this being. For the past might be as different from now as we expect of the future, and we are the arch on the shifting ground between.’

Inspired by the colours of ancient African, Mediterranean and Mesopotamian objects, Burnier’s painted sculptures with their rich, shifting hues hint at both the material and the metaphysical. Titling his works in Esperanto, an artificial European language devised by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, the artist raises questions around utopian ideas of communication and interconnectedness. According to Burnier, Esperanto is ‘a bridge from existing linguistic traditions [...] A universality without erasure, a reconstruction without a blank slate.’

–

Robert Burnier (b. 1969) is based in Chicago, USA. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute in painting and drawing in 2016. He also holds a BS in Computer Science from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania (1991). Previous solo shows include Soon the Night at Massey Klein Gallery, New York, USA (2022); Song Cycle at David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, USA (2021); Temple at Andrew Rafacz, Chicago, USA (2019); and The Ship’s Carpenter curated by Jordan Martins, at Elastic Arts, USA (2016). Burnier has also featured in group exhibitons at Corvi-Mora, London, UK; Vacation Gallery, New York, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, USA; and La Box, Bourges, France, amongst others. 

His work has been exhibited in solo and curated presentations at art fairs in Chicago, Miami, New York, Mexico City, and Copenhagen. He is included in numerous public and private collections.