CJ Burns

Christopher James Burns

Soliloquy

Born in Belfast in 1988

Christopher James Burns studied fine & applied art, specialising in sculpture, at the University of Ulster. He was the recipient of the 2008 Deane’s List Award & Bursary and graduated with first class honours in 2010. Burns explores the sculptural and material qualities of found or recovered industrial and natural objects. The resulting assembled objects juxtapose and contrapose elements to create new poetic relationships. Although he is aware of the art historical context of the readymade and the assemblage there is little similarity between how these terms are used in describing Burn’s work and its origins with objects such as Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), that were mass-produced and then, with little mediation, placed into an art context. In Burns’ art, the precise and considered interplay between components contributes to its poetic nature and makes it at once familiar and other. He comments on the contemporary state of mind, exploring feelings and ideas of nostalgia, longing, loss and fragility, his selection and investment of meaning in the materials he employs revealing a self confidence and maturity beyond his years. Exhibition continues until 11 March 2011 With thanks and acknowledgement to Hugh Mulholland, Ciara Hickey, Mark Shields, Kim McAleese, Dickon Hall and all the artists who participated in 2010’s Wish You Were Here…? postcard sale.