LAUGH AT THE ODDS
solo show by Helen Bur
27.10.18 - 08.12.18
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This time, we are going to take it with humor. Faced with uncertainty, meaninglessness, and misunderstanding, we choose to embrace the absurd condition of human existence. We could do it out of anger, sadness, or fear. On this occasion, Helen Bur has made the courageous decision to dress the lack of meaning with a smile. Such a choice is to be applauded when it comes from someone who travels the world week after week.
The cold / hot world, fatal / happy, dark / bright, the crazy world: depending on the side on which you decide to position yourself, any adjective works. Amid the chaos, there is one thing we can be sure of: time never stands still. Immodulable. Continuously perfect. Like the circles featured in this show, it has no beginning or end; time is eternal, continuous, cyclical. Our link to time, however, experiences increasingly irreversible variations with technological advance. In a sense, we have managed to accelerate it. Everything moves faster, time goes on longer. We take bursts of photos by pressing a simple button and go from one image to another in less than a second. American analyst Mary Meeker estimates that 3 billion images are exchanged every day on social media. Imagine the almost impossible task that the artists of our time now have. "Spectator, stand up and look." Almost nothing. Furthermore: stand up, watch and interpret. This is what I think most of Helen's work because she achieves it. She freezes time in the images of her and the receiver has no choice but to freeze the gaze, open the mind and search in that limbo that is the conscience of each one the explanation that allows us to understand where the inability to pass to the next picture.
ABOUT NATALIA VICO
Helen Bur is an English artist based in London. Great muralist, she has been developing her work all over the world for several years. In his large-scale public interventions, Bur evokes social themes always related to the contemporary history of the place where he poses his creations.
Her studio works, which she creates in the temporary workshops in which she settles between travel and travel, deal in the same way with problems related to contemporary social narrative. She deploys a realistic and captivating style, full of textures and expressiveness. His figures, taken in the action of the movement, are represented from the angle of sensitivity and empathy, aiming to create an instant link with the viewer.
Trained in Fine Arts at the Cardiff School of Art, her work has been exhibited in London, Berlin, Madrid, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo, among other cities. Her walls are becoming increasingly numerous throughout the festivals in which she participates. To name a few of the most recent ones, she has participated in the prestigious Nuart, in the Norwegian city of Stavenger, but also Upeart in Finland, Ibug in Germany, Urban Vision Festival in Italy, Kufa’s urban art in Luxembourg, Crystal Ship festival in Belgium, I Be Lady O project in Senegal and Start India in Mumbai, among others.
