Bruno David is pleased to present America Dystopia America, a video work by Colorado-based artist Charles Burson. This is artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Using appropriated contemporary images, (from newspapers, television, twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other online sources) tumbled, fragmentized, and granulated, Charles Burson seeks to evoke the threat of America becoming that fictionalized society portrayed in grand dystopian films and novels. Burson says “The foundation for such societies is dysfunctional government, teeming, violent and desperately poor masses and an overclass of wealthy, privileged, uncaring overlords. The events, divisions, and societal conditions of America’s Trump era, Covid and until now, the Biden era, evoke the conditions of such a dystopian society. At the core of this is a collapsing national consensus in and of America, the disappearance of which promotes conflict, stagnation, deep cultural divisions and a chasm of wealth and inequality.”

Charles Burson, born in Memphis, TN., received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts from the University of Cambridge, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He was the legal counsel (1997) and Chief of Staff (1999) to the Vice President of the United States under Al Gore.