Marie José Burki

Born in 1961 in Bienne, Switzerland, Marie José Burki lives and works between Brussels and Paris.
Photography, neon, text and video are the preferred media used by Marie José Burki. Using visual devices, her work focuses on creating constantly shifting relationships between static and moving images, which ceaselessly interrogate our perceptions of reality in a world saturated with images. Associated with close observation of the background of daily life, the confrontation of these media contributes to the realization of a ‘fixed’ temporality, and, by this very means, to an evocation of time as at once real and suspended, accurately reflecting its relationship to the world in which we live.
The artist is drawn to images of waiting and idleness; the camera films languid bodies in the intimacy of a living room or a hotel room. Beyond an almost absent narrative, a description emerges which plays with pictorial and literary codes, questioning the relationship with the pose in the image, along with the concepts of duration, space and perception. The time filmed by Marie José Burki is not social time. Naked and stripped, the time which passes before our slowed gaze makes us reflect in a world saturated by the acceleration of time.
Her first major solo exhibition took place at the Kunsthalle in Basel in 1995. Between 1998 and 1999 she participated in a series of solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern, the Kunstverien in Bonn, the Camden Arts Center in London and the Kunstverein in Stuttgart. In 1997, in response to an initiative by Diane Shamash and Minetta Brook, she began developing a film and audio project for public space in New York that was presented in May 2001.
Marie José Burki has participated in numerous group exhibitions, for example at the Museum Folkwang in Essen and the Musem van Hedendaagse Kunst (Muhka) in Antwerp. From 2003 to 2009 she was a professor at the Hochschule Für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. Since 2009, she has been a professor at the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. Since the beginning of her artistic career, Burki has won numerous awards such as the Recognition Award of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany, the UBS Video Art Award in Switzerland in 1996 and the Sabam Award in 2018. Since 1994 she has been a guest artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Works
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Marie José Burki
Sans titre (III), 2021
Photograph on Hannemuhle paper
Image : 180 x 100 cm
Edition de 3 + 2 EA -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (jardin I)
Photography
Framed: 89 x 131,5 x 3,8 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Marie José Burki
Si le passé et le futur sont, je veux savoir où ils sont, 2018
Centre de la photographie, Douchy les Mines
Photo: Vincent Everarts -
Exhibition view, Exposure: Figures of Speech, 2021
Centre-Commercial des Eaux-Vives, Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Julien Gremaud -
Marie José Burki
Exposure : Figure of Speech (2), 2013
Video
Edition 2/3 -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (jardin II)
Photography
Framed: 89 x 131,5 x 3,8 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Sometimes Shade, Sometimes Sun,
2017
Gulbenkian Fondation, Lisbon, Portugal -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (arbre II), 2019
Photography
Framed: 103 x 152,7 x 3,8 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Exhibition view, Exposure: Figures of Speech, 2021
Centre-Commercial des Eaux-Vives, Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Julien Gremaud -
Marie José Burki
Exposure : Figure of Speech (3)
Video -
Marie José Burki
Si le passé et le futur sont je veux savoir où ils sont, 2019
Neon tinted in the mass, electrical transformer
51 x 220 x 5 cm
Edition of 1 + 1 AP -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (gypso II), 2019
Photography
90 x 130,2 cm
Framed: 91,8 x 131,6 x 3,6 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (nuage II), 2019
Photography
Framed: 103 x 152,7 x 3,8 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Marie José Burki
Sans titre (main), 2019
Photography
33,3 x 50 cm
Framed: 34,4 x 50,9 x 2,9 cm
Edition of 3 + 2 AP -
Marie José Burki
De nous jours, par ici, 2007
Centre d’art contemporain, Sète -
Marie José Burki
Sometimes Sun Sometimes Moon, 2021
Blue and red mass-tinted neons and two electrical transformers
Each : 11 x 205 cm -
Marie José Burki
Horizons of a World, 2007
Château des Adhémar, Montélimar, France
Photo: André Morin -
Where I was born and what is my name,
2017
Kunsthaus Pasquart, Bienne
Photo: Julie Lovens, Sébastien Bozon -
Marie José Burki
Un chien sur la route au passage du promeneur, 2017
Centre de la photographie Douchy Les Mines
Photo: Vincent Everarts -
Marie José Burki
Where was I born and what is my name, 2003
Kunsthof, Zürich, Switzerland -
Marie José Burki
Time After, Time Along, The River (Hudson), 2001
Outdoor projection and cd audio, commissioned by Minetta Brook, New York.
Photo: Andrew Cross