Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10, from 5 to 8 pm.

BUNNY BURSON: EVERYTHING THAT WAS….STILL IS

Bruno David is pleased to present EVERYTHING THAT WAS….STILL IS, an exhibition of mixed media work by Bunny Burson. This is the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Bunny Burson’s recent body of artwork is part of a decades-long exploration of her family history. Her fascination with scientific breakthroughs, in particular the mapping of the human genome, led her to add digital fabrication to her artwork. Burson said “I wanted to link my DNA to my ancestors’ and this sequencing led to new imagery, processes, and knowledge.”

“On our family’s bookshelves were my father’s century old German schoolbooks, brought from Berlin in 1938. It was the typeface, the paper and the German titles which sparked my interest. To re-discover and alter these books was meaningful, as reading was an important part of growing up in our family. The fragile, faded book pages in German became the perfect platform for high-tech 3D chromosomes connecting me to previous generations.”

Bunny Burson, born in Memphis, TN., received a B.A. in French from Tulane University, which included a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. She earned a B.F.A. from the Memphis College of Art and an M.F.A. from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Burson’s artwork is included in the collections of the United States Library of Congress, The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute of Transformative Medicine, The Whitney Museum of American Art Frances Mulhall Achilles Library, the St. Louis Art Museum, The Perez Art Museum Miami among others.

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ADRIAN GONZALEZ: Lonchando in the Grass

Bruno David is pleased to present Lonchando in the Grass, an exhibition by Florida-based artist Adrian Gonzalez. This will be his first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Adrian Gonzalez speaks and uses the hybrid language of Spanglish — a language spoken commonly in the United States — to reflect cultural interaction that underlies our contemporary moment. He uses the exchange between Spanish and English through playful yet provocative bilingual phrases, expressions, and unstructured ideas of language that are meant to communicate new thinking and describe his work. He associates the combative, improvisatory creation of words with artistic methods in his studio practice to make collage and assemblage paintings, sculptures, and prints from a variety of drawn, printed, painted, sculpted, and found elements.

Adrian Gonzalez, born in California, lived in Ecuador, Puerto Rico, New York, and Florida — each with their own dialects of Spanglish. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis as a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Central Florida and is attending Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Summer 2022. He has exhibited nationally at Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art and, Orlando Museum of Art. He lives and works in Gainesville, FL.

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CHARLES BURSON: America Dystopia America

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.

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CHARLES P. REAY: Frederigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza

Bruno David is pleased to present Frederigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, a sculpture installation by Saint Louis based multi-disciplinary artist Charles P. Reay. This will be Reay’s fourth exhibition with the gallery, and will be on view 24/7 at 7513 Forsyth Blvd., Saint Louis (Downtown Clayton), MO.

Charles P. Reay created a sculpture from the most celebrated paintings of the Italian Renaissance by Piero della Francesca, the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza (1473-1475 c.) which is in the permanent collection of the Uffizi Galleries, Florence, Italy. In the tradition of the fourteenth century, inspired by the design of ancient coins, the two figures in the paintings, are shown in profile, an angle that ensured a good likeness and a faithful representation of facial details without allowing their sentiments to show through: indeed, the Duke and Duchess of Urbino appear unaffected by turmoil and emotions. Piero della Francesca marries the strict approach to perspective learned during his Florentine education with the lenticular representation more characteristic of Flemish painting, achieving extraordinary results and unmatched originality.

Reay’s recent public projects include Wild Walk at the Wild Center, Tupper Lake, NY. (Read at https://tinyurl.com/5a5e3a85 ). Reay’s best-known local project is the St. Louis Zoo’s Living World. He lives and works in St. Louis.