TOM BURR’s exhibition

TOM BURR’s exhibition “Compressions” at Galerie Neu is an undated postcard from America. It collides the iconography of Ronald Reagan’s powdered face with collages of the queer punk pope, Charles Atlas, spatially embedded in a cross shaped architectural structure. PIERRE-ALEXANDRE MATEOS and CHARLES TEYSSOU first started their curatorial exchange in 2018, collaborating on the project “Cruising Pavilion,” a series of exhibitions on architectures invented by dissident sexualities, realized with Rasmus Myrup and Octave Perrault. Since the 1990s, Tom Burr has been similarly investigating liminal spaces occupied by queer people. Using the tools of Minimalist and Post-Minimalist art, Burr reinterpreted, among others, Richard Serra’s priapic steel sculpture as a nomadic and melancholic structure and employed Robert Smithson’s thinking on counter architecture to speak about gay public sex as a form of landscape design. In this conversation, hosted at Galerie Neu on the occasion of the opening of “Compressions,” Mateos and Teyssou talk to Burr about the politics of fetishism, excrement as an anti-civilizational trigger, and Burr’s longtime obsession with Jim Morrison.

PIERRE-ALEXANDRE MATEOS and CHARLES TEYSSOU: The first work we see in the show, Atlas I, forms a triptych with Atlas II and Atlas III. Could you tell us more about these works?

TOM BURR: They are one component of the exhibition “Compressions,” which shows an array of new work that is not intended to function as a single installation, but a constellation of distinct works that are meant to be seen in tandem. The “Atlas” series, for example, is a direct reference to Charles Atlas, an American artist born in 1949. I think of him as a hinge figure. It’s impossible to talk about Robert Rauschenberg, for instance, without talking about Charles Atlas, or about Yvonne Rainer without mentioning Atlas. It’s the idea of an artist who is embedded into a connective tissue and is therefore only seen in the context of other artists.

PAM and CT: The “Atlas” series is a collision of dissimilar elements on a wood board. Two specific elements that fall into this notion are the fluorescent orange fabric and the pin tacks, which are affixed on each of the works.

TB: There are many multi-pronged impulses that make up the series. I was intrigued by using the color orange, so I backed into finding the reason why I should use it. A very early series of mine in which I utilized the color orange, Eight Orange Boxes (1989), was exhibited here at Neu in the group show “Divine” in 2021. I liked the way the orange appeared and wanted to do it again. So, orange was the theme, the kernel, for this work. Then I started to think about Charles Atlas, because he codified himself with this color. He has often used the color in his clothing, for his sideburns, and hair. Yet to my knowledge there isn’t anything written about this aspec