I believe that art has many functions for our well-being and the well-being of our societies. It clarifies the world around us, brings a sense of beauty, creates new languages or reveals old ones. And in general, I believe that art brings people closer together. And as a professional artist, it’s my job to produce works capable of fulfilling these functions.
With the abstractions series, I’m giving free rein to my taste for pictorial research. It’s with great joy and freedom that I’ve used unconventional materials (pieces of tile) as imprints or directly as supports, echoing the environment in which I’ve been living for the past 2 years, in the heavily industrialized north of Germany. I have also painted works on paper that are in line with the pictorial style I have been developing for years. - Bastien Burcher
Personally, I’m proud to present this series of abstractions in collaboration with the Steingast Art gallery. As a traditionally figurative painter, it’s not easy to develop abstract work. Is this a self-produced censure? Perhaps, but there’s an invisible wall between the figurative and the abstract that can’t easily be torn down. Nevertheless, I think that abstract work brings different pleasures from figurative work, and it would be wrong to deprive oneself of them. - Bastien Burcher
Born in Annecy in 1993, Bastien Bürcher is a French and Swiss artist. Following an experience as a graphic designer in Beirut, in January 2017 he made the decision fully launch himself into his artistic practice. Thus, he started an artistic residency At the Taverne Gutenberg, a creative laboratory in the heart of Lyon’s Guillotière neighbourhood. During the two years of this residency, he rediscovered his love for the visual arts and aesthetic research. He studied the aesthetic of the Antiquity period, and through his etchings he produced visuals of Black Figures vases. This series of monochromes birthed several exhibitions, two of which at an international level in Florence and Brussels.
At the end of 2018, Bürcher met Thierry Bounan, founder of the gallery and framing workshop Autour de l’image. This meeting would eventually give rise to a solo exhibition, «Figures Noires», in January 2020 and an BIOGRAPHY other one in 2021, «Mourir aur printemps». Those solo exhibitions were his first on such a large scale (60 canvases exhibitionned) and marked the beginning of the professionnalisation of Bürcher’s work.
The current work Bastien Bürcher is showing on the international scene is based on etchings and oil painting technics. According to the artist, “the principal danger for an artist is to create his own jail”. That’s why he tries to be in a constant research and offer to his contemporaries new experiences. Inspired by masters like El Greco, Artemisia Gentileschi, Norbert Schwontkovski, Paula Modersohn- Becker or Max Beckman. Bastien works on classical figurative topics like still life, intimate scene, portrait, litterature and lascape. Actually living in Bremen, Germany.
