Robert Burden’s toy box is filled with familiar images of childhood-Captain America, the Joker, Battle Cat and Hulk Hogan action figures reinvented as larger-than-life Technicolor epic paintings.
Each painting places the figure against a background that Burden recalls from wallpaper or other fabric patterns around his childhood home. His intentional juxtaposition of the masculine toy against the feminine background brings his own touch of irony to the subjects.
Burden often displays the original figure with the painting to show the long road from mass-produced, cheap import to objet d’art. Burden acknowledges the coveted place that these childhood favorites have had in his life and the lives of so many of us.
There is something innately cool about these toys taking on a life outside their intended usage. Burden captures some of the legendary status that the figures occupied in our imaginations by recreating them on canvas.
Burden is currently showing at the “10 under 30” show at the Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Monica, California through November 4th, 2008.
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