John Burltle
There Is Soooooooooooooooooooo Much or/and Recent Works on Paper
January 19 - February 23, 2019It is now just a spec of red amongst the paper thin clouds. A triceratops hovers over a spiky cactus. It tightens its grip with futility, as it loses its grasp on the bouquet of birthday balloons that keep it a float. Peeking out from behind the clouds, an eye emerges, just as the thunder cracks and a deluge drops down from the sky. Through the rumble, a load of trucks comes around, much too big for the little suburban road lined with white picket fences. The first truck carries a whale, tail curled back in mid-leap, the second, snow capped mountain peaks from which snowflakes grace the dinosaur on the side of its face. The third flatbed carries a haul of intrauterine contraceptive devices. The fourth, an ice cream cone stacked so high it fades from vision just before bending over into a trash can. The parade seems endless. The Statue of Liberty is overwhelmed, so she walks inside and heads into the bathroom to open up the cabinet and grab a small container. She pushes down and spins, pops a couple pills of Xanax, and curls up to slumber like a cat in a fishbowl.
John Burltle makes worlds using rubber stamps. The new work in this exhibition speak to the economy of image making, production, and value. Stamps of Xanax, butt plugs, butterflies, trash cans, Judge Lance Ito, and nails are among the few icons that figurate space and work to collectively construct dense environments. Each stamp coincides with a prepositional shift, through which singular icons retain their autonomy in surprising collisions next to, over, below, or above another. Things converge, unit by unit, connected in humor and darkness, much like a cacophony whose echo is greater than the sum of its parts. The stamps relationally shape each other and their shifting values with one another, effectively reproducing and circulating in the collaborative fluidity when worlds collide.