The first solo exhibition by Felix Burger in the Netherlands shows expansive installations from the last 10 years and new works that have been specially developed for the exhibition venue.
See also our side program.
Burger's visual language is not limited to one genre. A work rarely consists of a single piece, but rather of walk-in stages with narrative choreographies. In his 2021 publication, he says in an interview about future artistic ideas: "I would like to create a series of spaces that are connected to each other. I would try to develop a dramaturgy that extends not just through a single work, not just through a single room, but through an entire building."
In Brutus, he now realises this overall spatial approach and transforms the existing industrial architecture into a large, accessible stage set. Individual works are distributed across the various rooms and floors and represent worlds of their own; chambers of wonders with autonomous laws. Together, they form a coherent order of light and darkness, loud and quiet, movement and standstill.
Central themes are questions of perception, social and private power structures and human role-playing. Burger, who can often be seen in front of the camera as the protagonist, creates absurd intermediate worlds with reminiscences of early film, fairground trash and opera swagger. Traditional role models, social norms and gender classifications are dissected and arranged into new forms. Not in a moralising way, but with a childishly naive view of the adult world.
Burger mentions the Bavarian humourist Karl Valentin, the early avant-garde work of Christoph Schlingensief and Herbert Achternbusch or the film essays of Alexander Kluge as sources of inspiration. Artists who worked with humour as an instrument of resistance and created absurd narratives.
Comedy and despair are also closely intertwined in Burger's work: The universe created in Brutus bristles with subversive poetry, beautiful nightmares, meticulous dilettantism and disastrous misunderstandings.
In addition to his monographic work, the artist is also integrating collaborative projects with friends and colleagues from recent years into the exhibition: Together with Lion Bischof and Otakar Skala, he is showing the performance project "Circus Burger & Skala" (2024) for the first time as an elaborate video installation, with Sophia Süßmilch an excerpt from the joint cycle of "Der Kleine Mann" (2020-2022) and with Böhler & Orendt the ghost conjuring mirror "A Mess Carol" (2020).
Felix Burger, born in Munich in 1982, studied visual arts in Munich, Vienna and Cologne. He was a scholar at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York and at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2022, he held a guest professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His installations and films have been exhibited in numerous international institutions.
With collaborations by Lion Bischof, Böhler & Orendt, Otakar Skala and Sophia Süßmilch
Photo credit: Circus Skala & Burger @Bischof/Burger/Skala
See also our side program.
Burger's visual language is not limited to one genre. A work rarely consists of a single piece, but rather of walk-in stages with narrative choreographies. In his 2021 publication, he says in an interview about future artistic ideas: "I would like to create a series of spaces that are connected to each other. I would try to develop a dramaturgy that extends not just through a single work, not just through a single room, but through an entire building."
In Brutus, he now realises this overall spatial approach and transforms the existing industrial architecture into a large, accessible stage set. Individual works are distributed across the various rooms and floors and represent worlds of their own; chambers of wonders with autonomous laws. Together, they form a coherent order of light and darkness, loud and quiet, movement and standstill.
Central themes are questions of perception, social and private power structures and human role-playing. Burger, who can often be seen in front of the camera as the protagonist, creates absurd intermediate worlds with reminiscences of early film, fairground trash and opera swagger. Traditional role models, social norms and gender classifications are dissected and arranged into new forms. Not in a moralising way, but with a childishly naive view of the adult world.
Burger mentions the Bavarian humourist Karl Valentin, the early avant-garde work of Christoph Schlingensief and Herbert Achternbusch or the film essays of Alexander Kluge as sources of inspiration. Artists who worked with humour as an instrument of resistance and created absurd narratives.
Comedy and despair are also closely intertwined in Burger's work: The universe created in Brutus bristles with subversive poetry, beautiful nightmares, meticulous dilettantism and disastrous misunderstandings.
In addition to his monographic work, the artist is also integrating collaborative projects with friends and colleagues from recent years into the exhibition: Together with Lion Bischof and Otakar Skala, he is showing the performance project "Circus Burger & Skala" (2024) for the first time as an elaborate video installation, with Sophia Süßmilch an excerpt from the joint cycle of "Der Kleine Mann" (2020-2022) and with Böhler & Orendt the ghost conjuring mirror "A Mess Carol" (2020).
Felix Burger, born in Munich in 1982, studied visual arts in Munich, Vienna and Cologne. He was a scholar at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York and at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2022, he held a guest professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. His installations and films have been exhibited in numerous international institutions.
With collaborations by Lion Bischof, Böhler & Orendt, Otakar Skala and Sophia Süßmilch
Photo credit: Circus Skala & Burger @Bischof/Burger/Skala
