Elza Burkart

When looking at one of Elza Burkart’s blue hued watercolors, you might not be immediately sure of what you are perceiving. Shadowy bodies with inky suggestions, details that disappear off the page, inviting you to fill in the blanks with your own subconscious. This invitation is open, you’re free to get close to the figures taking form on the pages. 

It’s easy to notice the themes, skin on skin, burning eyes that look straight into yours, clothes being pulled off, but the details become the composition. The entire frame is dedicated to a single finger hooked into a snagged stocking; pale hands mercilessly wrapped around a lover’s throat, the kinds of details that might sear themselves into your memories if you had experienced them yourself. With Elza Burkart’s brushstrokes, she obsessively recounts the moment of impact, turning an instant into an edifice to intimacy. 

Her next series takes these themes to a larger format, the small glimpses now take up more and more space on sprawling broadsheet surfaces. Tentatively titled “Are We Going To Be OK?” these pieces stand apart but each are linked by small precise elements, almost like the figures are doing everything they can to communicate together, to soothe, to receive. Isn’t that something we’ve all had to learn how to do, in these chaotic times? To allow ourselves to receive what is needed, from the people around us?