A constant state of flux
Lucinda Burgess’s background in painting, landscape design and oriental philosophy has led to a fascination with the raw elemental qualities of materials and inform a sculptural practice that accentuates the reality of constant change, undermining the idea of a fixed thing, object, entity or identity.
All things are in a state of flux.
Heraclitus, C. 535 BC
Since my last contribution to Interalia magazine in 2018, I have continued to place great emphasis on the natural character of materials be they glass, graphite, wax, steel, wood and most particularly paper. I’m presenting materials simply and minimally in a way that accentuates their natural character: steel rusts, glass reflects, paper bends, wax shines, graphite reflects and changes tone. This emphasis placed on natural processes like reflection and rusting helps to underline the constantly changing nature of life because these processes happen without human intervention: rust continues to grow; reflections continue to alter; light continues to change.
As the viewer moves around the work their first-hand experience is one of dramatic changeability. Lines and circles are clearly changed by the laws of perspective. Lines become shorter or longer as the viewer moves, circles become ovals. Reflective surfaces dance and ripple. The visual field is in a constant state of flux.
And so, as in 2018, change is being emphasized on two fronts; materials are changing, and first-hand experience is changing.
‘One Pencil Only’ series, 2024. Installation at Space of Time Gallery, Beijing, China, 2025.
In my most recent work ‘One Pencil Only….’ (2024) which is showing at Space of Time Gallery, Beijing, China, (a solo show this Spring 2025) I am introducing a range of colour for the first time. It is an installation of ten drawings spaced over 5 metres along an aluminium shelf. Each one is made with one pencil only and titled with the manufacturer’s colour reference, for example ‘One Pencil Only – India Red 192’. When a whole pencil of this colour is used, it turns out that it keeps changing: there is a variable ratio of wax to pigment; the colour also changes according to the angle of the paper surface in relation to the eye; according to the variable light in the room; the weather; the neighbouring colour and so it goes on. Our experience as we walk around ‘India Red 192’ is in fact a spectrum of changing colours.
One Pencil Only – India Red 192.
This is a work that really underlines the contrast between our ideas of fixed things, (colours, objects, entities, identities), existing out there in an objective world, versus the reality of first-hand direct experience of constant, unrelenting motion. Whilst focusing on this disparity is Buddhist, there is clearly equivalence in western philosophy. Hegel said that, when we grasp at an idea of a thing, we apprehend that it is in movement, and that everything can be something else; it’s all very fluid. Similarly, phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty argued that all that philosophy could and should be is a description of experience.
Suitably for an exhibition in China, my recent work also acknowledges and integrates the Taoist insights into the interplay of opposites—day/night, hot/cold, light/dark, birth/death. In this exhibition these opposing forces are visibly apparent with a series of monochrome works which are, at the same time, rectilinear and organic, hard and soft, masculine and feminine.
Segue I & II. 2024.
Both ancient Chinese and Buddhist philosophies describe everything as being in movement. Things are always changing into other things, not standing still. Segue I (2024) and Segue II (2024) describe a transition: the drawings are folded, they are becoming sculptures. The frame is no longer a protection, instead, it has become a 3-dimensional sculptural component.
In an increasingly polarised world, the work is hinting at underlying qualities of fluidity, motion and harmony, qualities which will outlive our all-too-human preoccupations and worries.
Variations in Red. 2020.
Never the Same. 2021.
Timeline. 2022.
Quintet in 3h. 2022.
Zigzag II. 2022.
On Focus. 2023.
Line (2024)
Red III 2023.
Flow 2024.
25 pencils, all ‘Deep Red C130’. 2024.
Becoming. Transition. Drawn Out. 2024.
Becoming. Transition. Drawn Out. 2024.
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Instagram @lucinda.burgess
All images copyright and courtesy of Lucinda Burgess
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