Aerosol Windows of the Soul
An interview with Jon Burgerman

Patrick Tayler

Patrick Tayler: What were your —artistic and pop-cultural— influences while developing your universe of fuzzy faces, catatonic or blubbering blobs, stand-alone cut-out figures and a myriad of floating critters?

Jon Burgerman: It’s actually a variety of things: Norman McLaren’s animation, Jim Henson’s puppets, the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for merging cartoons and the real world. Also, artists like Elizabeth Murray, Sam Gilliam, Katharina Grosse, Yoshitomo Nara, Cy Twombly, Claes Oldenburg and Olafur Eliasson, especially his foggy room.
Music is also an important inspiration for me. I am drawn, for example, to the work of Chihei Hatakeyama, Burial, Caterina Barbieri and Kali Malone, whose album The Sacrificial Code came out in 2019, when I started experimenting with aerosol paints. It articulated how I felt: ethereal but without the beauty. It also sounded like the work I wanted to make: warm hues, a slow progression of ambient tones, feeling uplifted and deflated simultaneously. I think I have a form of synaesthesia. Music frequently presents itself to me as form and colour, and sounds appear to me like intangible forms that you want to look closely at but can’t quite draw into focus. I often compose the works as if they were made of sound: certain colours are bassy, others tinny and high, etc.
I recently read the latest Bret Easton Ellis book, The Shards. As in many of his books, the characters are self-medicating and self-destructive. They seem to have a drive to totally remove themselves from existence. There’s something in that quality that I really connect to regarding some of my more recent paintings, where the forms are pushing deeper into abstraction. A character in the book plays Ultravox’s Vienna repeatedly, and I started to do the same. There’s a line in the song that goes, “The image has gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me,” which is how I feel about my new paintings. Maybe that’s a bit cheesy, perhaps I’m deeply depressed, but I think there’s a kind of beauty and transcendence in complete detachment. Perhaps that’s the only way I can deal with all the bad things happening in the world and still create art.

PT: Your work seems to expand into a universe of its own. Your characters spill out into the “open space”. How does your practice connect to the subversive aspect of street art? 

JB: In the early 2000s, I became friends with a bunch of street artists in the UK and in NYC and through that scene, I also got to hang out with some activists and “culture jammers”. Whilst I wouldn’t consider myself an activist or street artist, I definitely took inspiration from the punky, pranky attitude everyone seemed to have. There’s a lot of humour in street art and activist works, destabilising the viewer with wit before poking them with some awful truth. Works can manifest anywhere, and the city becomes a playground, along with virtual and digital spaces. I think I’ve taken this ethos from that culture. I like to imagine I’m quite punk about what I can make, where and how. I’m happy for my work to exist across many forms (from paintings to plastic plates!), and it can be sincere and ironic simultaneously. I’m trying to say serious things but in a non-serious manner (expressing our deep feelings is complicated and embarrassing).

PT: You often talk about large-scale, important issues (environment, mental health), but you do it playfully. How does an artist delve into big issues while retaining their humour?

JB: You’ve got to laugh, right? Otherwise, we cry! Also, the rapid destruction of this jolly nice planet —the only one we can actually exist on— is so stupid it’s almost funny. On the spectrum of serious and funny, we’re pushed so far beyond serious it’s now at a point where, if you’re so inclined, it looks comical. Today, for example, the UK government cancelled a bill on limiting pollution into the waterways, resulting in a huge cost to taxpayers and further denigration to our environment! I try taking an outsider’s perspective (like an alien) and talking about these things in my work without being too much of a downer. Not caring is the best way for me to show I care. The playfulness is actually a form of pragmatic idealism.

PT: You often collaborate with various institutions and artists while creating a wide array of commercial products, toys, furniture, pool floats, books, environments and all kinds of further explosive situations. Who are your role models in thinking about the various realms an artist can reach? Do you believe there is still an elitism to the art scene that would wish artists wouldn’t merge the artistic and the commercial?

JB: I recently read the Keith Haring journals and loved his thoughts on how accessible an artwork should be. I think he’s a great role model for expansive practices, where art can exist beyond galleries and freeport storage facilities. It doesn’t work for every artist though. Keith’s art still makes sense as a poster or badge, whereas some artists make commercial objects that are just merchandise, making no sense in the context of their practice. Basquiat’s estate, for example, will slap his paintings on seemingly anything.
I’ve made a lot of merch, primarily at the start of my career, simply to pay the rent and stay fed. In recent years, I have been more mindful of the kind of commercial projects I take on. I try to do things that can be considered an offshoot of my art practice. A good example of this is a giant inflatable hot dog I made with Third Drawer Down. The inflatable is fun enough as an object, but when I see photos of it on the beach, in swimming pools and at music concerts, I feel like the circuit has been connected: now it’s fully functioning as a piece of my work. It becomes a goofy site-specific collaboration.
I think there’s a lot of internal snobbery towards actively commercial artists, but if the galleries or institutions can spin big bucks out of it, then it’s okay. Ultimately, making money conquers all. Many people are snooty about Kaws, but then a museum will have a blockbuster big show with his work where the gift shop sells out within a few days, and it funds their programme for the next year. Actually, it seems to be a hang-up more in the West. In Asia, there is a smoother gradient between commercialism (populism) and chin-stroking high art. Is it a coincidence that the masters of dancing along this line originate from the east: Murakami, Kusama, Nara, etc.?
I take inspiration from comics, animation, designs, toys and games, as well as from art, so it makes sense that some of my work should take these forms. 

PT: I was walking around at the opening of The Cuteness Factor, eye-balling your figures, overwhelmed by the intensity of their misty, hazy and atmospheric gaze. This special confrontational aspect runs through many of your pieces. What led you to emphasise this situation? 

JB: I just want some attention! I want to be noticed and make a connection (even if it’s just through my work). Actually, especially through my work, because I can’t hold that sort of gaze in real life. I’m too shy and self-conscious. The work is an acceptable mask for me to hide behind. I don’t purposely make the characters confrontational, but I want them to meet the viewers’ eye, not in a challenging way, but more suggestive.

PT:  Do you think it is a valid perspective to talk about the “cuteness factor” of certain contemporary practices? Is it something that you relate to? Were there any favourite pieces by other artists you stumbled upon at the exhibition in Budapest? 

JB: Yeah, I think it’s valid. It runs through a lot of art but is also deeply embedded in our culture. There’s something interesting going on in the infantilising of adults. It’s everywhere. Millennials say things like “I’m adulting” (to play at being an adult) to downplay being a grown-up because we don’t want to face up to the responsibilities and horrors of twenty-first-century life. I think there’s a through-line that can be drawn to why ‘cute’ works resonate, that we want to be comforted and feel safe in a child-like way. 
I don’t actually consider my works cute, but I can see why people suggest so. It’s just how I work. I think of my characters as perturbed or blissfully naive (so dumb they’re happy). I go for maximum expression with minimum effort, which is why faces are simplified down as far as possible (big eyes, big mouths). For me, they’re abstractions.
The whole Cuteness Factor show is great, and it is fun to see these kinds of works in a review together. Particularly, I liked the pieces by Gelitin, Joyce Pensato, Paola Pivi and Teppei Kaneuji.

PT: What role did social media play in your career? What do you “use” it for today? 

JB: It’s brought my work to a wider audience and allowed for new connections with collectors and galleries. I use it mainly for time wasting, research, feeling bad about myself and stalking other people and artists. People DM me in the way that we first started using email, so it’s just become part of my digital communication ecosystem. As much as I’d like to give it up, it’s probably not a good idea from a work perspective. Social media used to be an addition to our means of communication, but now it’s firmly an addiction.

PT:  What are you working on at the moment?

JB: I’m working on a proposal for a large-scale exhibition with a space in Asia. Let’s see if it actually happens, though, there seems to be a lot of caution now that all the markets are slowing down. I paint all the time, regardless of whether I have a show coming up or not. So, I’m making some new paintings on linen, which are looser, softer, vaguer, wispier and softer. They are as if a smog from far-away wildfires has swept across from another country, making the future a little harder to see.

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Website: https://jonburgerman.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonburgerman/