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Zaratan Open Studio

My Zaratan open studio starts Friday, Jan 27 at 7pm to 10pm and goes until Sunday, Jan 29. The open studio is upstairs from the gallery in the residents’ quarters. I will show the studies that I created during my residency period. At the same time, I will show a work-in-progress sculpture using beer cans and a collaborative video with fellow resident Daniel Gawronski. Admission is free. This comes after my artist talk, which you can see here. All pieces are for sale, including a limited-edition run of a Risograph. I created the Risograph at the request of the

January 25, 2017

Novo-Surrealism Artist Talk at Zaratan

This video is of the Novo-Surrealism artist talk I gave in January, 2017 at Zaratan Arte Contemporanea in Lisbon, Portugal. The topic was Novo-Surrealism and the Media’s Message versus the Audience’s Understanding of Reality. About 10 people attended live and about 200 people attended on the live broadcast on FB Live. The discussion lasted about an hour. It covered the theory, possible avenues the project can take going forward, and how open the idea can become. I was a bit nervous, as I had not given a serious artist talk like this before. In the end, however, I knew

January 14, 2017

Collaboration: Zaratan by Greg Mason Burns and Daniel Gawronski

I recently did a residency in Lisbon, Portugal and while there I met the other artist-in-residence, Daniel Gawronski. Daniel is an Australian artist who works primarily with sound art. His method is interesting in that he takes images from the natural environment and uses those to map musical compositions. We both attended the residency at Zaratan Arte Contemporanea in Lisbon, but this collaboration was an accident. For the audio, Gawronski used a photograph of trees from a forest Sintra, Portugal, outside Lisbon, to create a music scale. Trees that were close represented low notes and trees that were in

January 12, 2017

Redefining The Surreal (Novo-Surrealism)

While some of my work may have a hint of Surrealism in it, I am not a Surrealist by definition. And yet I feel as if I am a Surrealist in spirit and maybe by nature as well. To start, I care nothing of dreams and the contradiction between them and real life. This, shown with great realism, is the definition of Surrealism. However, there is a deeper meaning to Surrealism, and if André Breton was right in that Surrealism was a revolutionary movement then I certainly fit in. I do so via approach as opposed to what the painting

April 25, 2016

Beauty and Evolution: is Beauty a Defense Mechanism?

Beauty and Evolution I can´t argue against this. Denis Dutton has a pretty convincing argument one way or another, but how true is it? His theory suggests that what we perceive as beauty is as evolved as our bodies are. He argues that the shape of a diamond is eerily similar to that of a pre-historic stone spearhead. Furthermore, these stones weren´t just made to kill animals but to show off abilities for the purpose of mating. Think about it, a man makes a stone not to kill, but to show that he´s capable of creating such a stone, and

January 13, 2016

Telling the Truth in Art

Telling the Truth in Art Nothing irks me more in art than criticism that uses modern fashion as a justification for it’s existence. In fact, if a piece of art is being criticized because the piece fails to follow modern fashionable conventions then the piece is very likely by definition “art”. I don’t say this meaning that art must or even should break conventions (I don’t believe that at all). But art that conforms to prevailing fashions intentionally is missing something, and that missing piece is truth. Truth is nothing new in art, but what the truth is, unfortunately,

January 5, 2016

Greg Mason Burns