recent works

Felix Burger

LONG WAY TO HAPPINESSInstallation 25 x 25 mButterflymachine / 400 mechanical butterflies on metalbars, slideprojectors3 x 16 mm films / 10´19 min, 3´19 min, 4´33 min, loopprojectors DrawingsSilk - screen printing

Exhibitionsspace Brutus / Atelier Van Lieshout / Rotterdam / September 2017

Images of collective memory send through my personal matrix / transformed into a subjectiveabsurd theater between childhood and history

children birthdayparty - rebuilding model of the World Trade Centerpuppet fails security checkpointshellfire on the passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff WWII reconstructed on Bavarian lake 2017

16 mm loops

shellfire on the passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff WWII - reconstructed on Bavarian lake 2017children birthdayparty - rebuilding of collapsed World Trade Center puppet fails security checkpoint

Butterfly - bomberInstallation set up - 400 moving butterflies on metalbars, slide projectors

A space that calls to mind a traditional gallery like one at the Museum of Natural History in New York, Burger shows us a fake astronomic collection of analogue photographs, objects and films. The artist creates a concept of the world without leaving his studio, working with optical manipulation to set up his own microcosm: stars made of garbage bags, galaxies composed of hot glue. Burger places himself in the center of the narration as researcher, conductor and omniscient storyteller.

weißer Zwerg (collection)MuseuM eye, AMsterdAM

Installation, 9 x 5 mPhotographs, sculptures, objects, 9 - channel audio, 2 - channel video

Installation, 2016 / two rooms

Weißer Zwerg (Collection) - Museum Eye, Amsterdam-

Weißer Zwerg (Conference) - Hacking Habitat, former prison Wolvenplein, Utrecht

weißer Zwerg

weißer Zwerg (collection) / Installation, 2016Installationview

weißer Zwerg (collection) / Installation, 2016Installationview

weißer Zwerg (collection) / Installation, 2016Installationview

weißer Zwerg (collection) / Installation, 2016C - print on barite paper, handprint, 50 x 60 cm / series of 180 bigformat negatives (current and previous pages)

Andrea Kopranovic / Christine König Galerie / Pressreview Weißer Zwerg/ April 2017

The depiction of a world, captured in projections, objects and photographs, the individual pieces connected to create a fictive collection – “Weißer Zwerg” is the title that Felix Burger (*1982, Munich) has given his absurd uni-verse. It is the constant center of a fragmented narrative whose pieces co-exist on equal footing. The mise-en-scène of speech meets with a life-infused chair object that triggers unease, while the artifacts that appear to be captured in photographs stem from an alternative reality. Burger develops his parallel work in the security of his studio whose freedoms and limitation he repeats in the ex-hibition space. Self-portraits in a white dress, with the mimics and gestures of someone mentally impaired or with a mask and prosthetic leg as a dwarf – this creates a seemingly intimate proximity when viewing it. At the same time, his alter ego remains aloof, distant and bound up in a fiction into which he offers no personal glimpses. The ensemble becomes a manifestation of a dream sequence, whose narrator, protagonist and viewer is Felix Burger all in one. In what appears to be straight out of a nightmare, the chair alien emerges with a breathing mask, huffing and puffing, reciting ambiguous concepts with a mechanical voice – words that have been written with white chalk on a black wall. Thematically they revolve around astronomy and physics, each concept could, however, be extended by adding additional layers of meaning. The mise-en-scène is complemented by analogue photographs depicting what appears to be astronomical phenomena, which also challenge the viewer’s imagination. Artifacts emerge from the waste material, the remainders in the artist’s studio and these lose their materiality through photography – they are galaxies burned with a hot-air fan. The title „Weißer Zwerg“ references not only the blurredness of the particles but also of the entire installation, also giving a name to the artist figure Burger in his micro cosmos. The installation „Weißer Zwerg“ was created especially for the 2016 exhibition “Close-Up – A New Generation of Film and Video Artists in the Netherlands“ at the Eye Museum Amsterdam. Christine König Gallery shows a modificated version of the room.

In the conference room at the former prison Wolvenplein, 25 sculptures can be found seated around a large table. Cyborgs made of industrial foam, metal stands, silicone and patex glue create figures that are both alien and studiotrash. They seem to be having a conversation amongst themselves, speaking in frag-ments and choirs, repeating specific words, or try to learn a text. The table reminds us - with its long cuts by a circular saw, diffe-rent layers of paint, dust and plaster - of a military landscape; tracks and boarders formed by a fictious society. Casts from in-solation pipes and aerosol cans stand erect on the table like a utopic city; rockets before a launch or chess figures mid play.Open books show alternating historic concepts of the world -

weißer Zwerg (conFerence)HAcking HABitAt, utrecHt

Installation, 6 x 8 m 14 - channel audio, 4 - channel video, sculptures, furnitures,

drawings, books, photographs i.a

- TEXT -

MIT HEIßLUFTFÖN GEBRANNTE GALAXIENKLEINE PARTIKEL IN ERDNÄHE

EUROPAES ISOLIERT VOM LEBENSFEINDLICHEN AUSSENRAUM, ES SCHÜTZT UND WÄRMT WIE EINE ZWEITE HAUT

EUROPA - JUPITERMONDSUPERNOVA

WEIßER ZWERG

U.A.

weißer Zwerg (conFerence) / Installation, 2016Installationview

weißer Zwerg (conFerence) / Installation, 2016Details

weißer Zwerg (conFerence) / Installation, 2016Details

weißer Zwerg (conFerence) / Installation, 2016Details

sHell sHock syndroMeInstallation, 16 x 10 m, 2014

2 x 16 mm films, 50 mechanical heads, 5 - channel audio,silk - screens, photographs, objects, furnitures, sculptures,

drawings i.a.

50 mechanical dolls, no complex technoid cyborgs, alter egos of Felix Burger, glued together amateurishly, sing the opening hymn of St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. One of the most intricate works in the history of music, a passion about suf-fering, death and resurrection, it serves as a spiritual metronome and determines the fall height of Burger’s installation. All of the choir voices intonated by the artist fragment the composition and transform it into a biographical song of lament, vacillating between slapstick and drama, between intellectual world theater and an elaborate children’s room.The installation remains incomplete, the atelier looks abandoned. Two film sequences show Burger in front of his unfinished work. Rattling 16 mm projectors seem to manipulate him, his actions appear heteronomous – similar to injured soldiers suffering from shell shock: immobilized, frightened, mentally retarded.Failure becomes the central theme of this work, the calculated motif of artistic motivation. In cabinets drawings of the instal-lation are mixed with construction plans of the Hindenburg, the greatest airship ever built. It explodes, a burning phallus, over Lake Hurst in 1937.

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Installationview

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Installationview

restaging shell shock

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Installationviews

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 20142 layer silk - screen

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 20143 layer silk - screens on glass

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Installationview

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Details

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 201416 mm film, loop

restaging shell shock

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 201416 mm film, loop

restaging shell shock

sHell sHock syndroMe / Installation, 2014Details

Installationview

Felix Burger is confronted with his self-appointed, artistic forbe-ars in a mystical cabinet. He declares them to be fetishes whose story he embraces, enabling him to reinterpret it as he fancies:Burger plans the final Parsifal staging with a handicrafted Ri-chard Wagner made out of styrofoam. An airplane crash some-where between the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, Crimea and the Andes forces the artist to consume Joseph Beuys’ holy body in an act of cannibalism.Burger himself slips into the role of Ludwig II. – an eccentric monarch, a dreamer and postmodern builder of fairy-tale cast-les. With a pasted on beard and eyeblood makeup he stands in his tiny bathroom gazing over the world.

downed

Installation, 2 rooms, 5 x 10 m, 20132 - channel video, photographs, models, sculptures, drawings i.a.

downed / Installation, 2013Installationview room I

downed / Installation, 2013Installationview room II

downed / Installation, 2013 / C - print, 175 x 155 cm

downed, Installation / 2013Photographs on Ilford direct positive paper, 12.4 x 9.8 cm, unique

downed / Installation, 2013Photograph on Ilford direct positive paper, 12.4 x 9.8 cm, unique

downed / Installation, 2013Photographs on Ilford direct positive paper, 12.4 x 9.8 cm, unique

downed / Installation, 2013Photographs on Ilford direct positive paper, 12.4 x 9.8 cm, unique

downed / Installation, 2013Installationview room II

scHliersee eine PArtHie iM BAyeriscHen HocHlAnde

Installation, 2011/2012Photographs, models, vitrines, objects, films i.a.

i.a.

The installation, which documents the building of a fictional theme park, consists of a walk - in room, photos, drawings, models, plans, various objects and a video with the following content: „In an enormous underground hall, an artificial repro-duction of my homeland was built by Polish migratory workers, all wearing a mask portraying my face. There is a relief map of the Alpine foothills and an enormous lithography depicting Jo-eseph Anton Koch’s „Schmadribachsfall“, shining brightly over his parents’ house in the background. When a moon in the shape of a 650 watt lightbulb is put up, Wagner’s „Lohengrin“-prelude booms through the hall. Finally, empty cable-cars move through the ghostly scenery. A pompous and pathetical parallel world is created, stunningly beautiful and confusing at the same time. The radical way in which the project is carried out is reminiscent of fascist buildings as well as of the romantic aesthetic of the late 19th century’s music and literature, giving birth to a place of longing, somewhere between Disneyworld, Ludwig II’s grotto at Linderhof Castle and Joseph Fritzl’s cellar.“ (Felix Burger)

scHliersee - eine PArtHie iM BAyeriscHen HocHlAnde / Installation, 2011Photograph

scHliersee - eine PArtHie iM BAyeriscHen HocHlAnde / Installation, 2011Installationview Parkhaus Kunstverein, Düsseldorf

scHliersee - eine PArtHie iM BAyeriscHen HocHlAnde / Installation, 2011Detail

wAruM icH lieBer MärcHenkönig Als künstler geworden wäre / C - print, 130 x 170 cm, 2012

The artist is sitting on a baroque carpet in his parents’ home. In front of him are three amusement park models. The camera comes closer to the events taking place and shows how the ar-tist begins to illuminate the miniatures with a piano lamp. Huge shadows are cast into the ambience of an upper middle-class setting, roller coasters speed along the walls, a merry-go-round clatters on a stucco ornament, swing boats squeak. The sound of the models is amplified to over-modulation. The children’s game becomes a staged nightmare.

willkoMMen dAHeiMVideo, 2`22 min, 2009

willkoMMen dAHeiM / Video, 2`22 min, 2009 / Videostill

Documentary about a planned city change after a model of Baron Haussmann or Albert Speer. The change does not, however, serve military purposes or propaganda but rather the creation of a romantic image in accordance with the artist’s wishes. His parents’ home becomes a medieval mill which magically rotates in an isolated area.

tHe Mill on BlAck wAterVideo, 3`50 min, 2010

Mill on BlAck wAter / Video, 3´50 Min, 2010 / Videostill

Felix Burger

born 1982 in Munich2003 - 2010 Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Munich

2010 International Studio and Curatorial Programm ISCP, New York2013 - 2014 Rijksakademie van beeldenden kunsten, Amsterdam

GrantsBayerischer Staatspreis für Bildende Kunst, Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Preis der Kunststiftung NRW, Debutantenpreis der Stadt München, Sudienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes i.a.

since 2016 lecturer at the Academie of Fine Arts Nurembergliving in Rotterdam and Munich

Soloshows i.a.Brutus, Atelier Van Lieshout, Rotterdam Weißer Zwerg, Christine König Gallery II by Robby Greif, Vienna Kleine Partikel in Erdnähe, Annet Gelink Gallery Bakery, Amsterdam Burgers Simultanhalle, Simultanhalle, Cologne Parkhaus, Kunstverein Dusseldorf

Groupshows i.a.Eye Museum Amsterdam, Taxispalais Innsbruck, Museum Ludwig Cologne, Kunstverein Dusseldorf, Eres - Stiftung Munich, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Centre Pompidou Paris, Museum Hilversum, Bonnefanten Museum Maastricht, KiT Dusseldorf, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Munich, Lensvelt Milan, Kunsthalle Baden - Baden, Kunstverein Mannheim, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Kunsthaus Nuremberg i.a.