IN UNISON
Burris at Anton
Anton Gallery is also showing several folk artists in honor of the Hemphill exhibition, along with the paintings of Bruce Burris, which form an intriguing bridge between contemporary art and folk art. Burris's imagery and impetus are drawn from several years spent working with homeless and abused children in San Francisco, Despite his sophistication as an artist, this young Californian paints with the irrepressible intensity associated with folk art, His paintings explode with vibrating dots of clashing colors and anguished writing. Painfully aware of the depth of suffering found even in this privileged culture, Burris peoples his works with silhouetted figures whose broken bones, absent faces and exposed genitals are defenseless in an emotionally numb world.
Despite the nightmares these works represent, they also hold a persistent ray of optimism, Words such as 'hope" and 'feeling' are lettered into surfaces so animated that they seem to glow with a vital force, In "in This Light," a beam of yellow light shines on a drug addict, an alcoholic and a woman bleeding from her empty womb, The realization that people who suffer so deeply in such profound isolation can still yearn to live is perhaps the greatest message of all.