ERNESTO BURGOS & CHRIS DUNCAN : HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

Halsey McKay is pleased to present a two-person exhibiton with Ernesto Burgos and Chris Duncan. The exhibition draws out poetic visual surprises and a curious formal harmony between two seemingly disparate approaches to art making.

Ernesto Burgos creates forms that challenge first impressions and untether the expectations of sculpture. Made of cardboard, fiberglass, and aqua resin, embellished with paint and charcoal, his works rest on table-like pedestals. On first glance these weighty masses appear too immense for their bases, too heavy for these supports. With further looking they begin to almost float off their plinths, ready to alight into the space around them.

A similar visual sleight is apparent in Chris Duncan’s sun bleached and painted fabric works. The subtle nuance and detail created by months-long exposures to direct sunlight is contrasted with bold saturated acrylic color, applied in the studio. This immediate, painterly, action is married with nature’s mark of time and the elements as they occur on their own accord. An ebb and flow is created between the graphic and the ethereal, flatness and depth, photographic and painterly concerns.

Ernesto Burgos (Chile, b. 1979 in Santa Clara, CA) received his BFA from California College of the Arts in 2004 and his MFA from New York University in 2008. Burgos has held solo exhibitions at Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; MIER gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Goma, Madrid, Spain; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; and David Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL. His work has been exhibited at venues including the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; Ideobox, Miami, FL; Apex Art, New York, NY; Casino Metropolitano, Mexico City, Mexico; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and The Paper Mill Gallery, Sydney, Australia. He currently lives and works in New York, NY. Ernesto Burgos is represented by Kate Werble Gallery, NY and Galerie The Goma, Madrid.

Chris Duncan (b.1974, Perth Amboy, NJ) holds an MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Chris Duncan has held solo exhibitons with Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, Canada; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Halsey McKay, New York, and East Hampton, NY. His work has been included in exhibitions at The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Museum Of Modern Art, NY, New York; De Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA; and The Marjorie Barrick Museum at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. Duncan’s work is held in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art, New York, NY; SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA; The Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and the Arsenal, Montreal, Canada. Outside of his studio practice he organizes events and runs a small artist book press and record label called LAND AND SEA with his wife. He currently lives and works in Oakland, California. Chris Duncan is represented by Halsey McKay Gallery.