Cristina Burns’ work offers a poised and humorous vision of a world measured more by twisted fantasy than by the so-called sanity we are all so accustomed to assuming. Working primarily in photography, the artist creates works reminiscent of seventeenth-century European cabinets of curiosity, museums of medical and anthropological oddities, and children’s books, cartoons, and playthings—her photographs ooze a cloyingly saccharine Rococo sensibility that is distinctly infused with a touch of the macabre.
She began her artistic career basing her research on the study of colors, on the world of toys and on hyper contemporary materials, where kaleidoscopic images and enchanted microcosms are elements that affect and stimulate the subconscious of the viewer.
Burns’ images vacillate between sweet and fearful, resonating with clichés and critiques, often traversing all of these qualities simultaneously. The artist’s work touches the depths of psychological despair, veers towards turpitude and injects the intense ups and downs of an energetic sugar rush. As a group, and a set of groups, her works function as the pieces of a puzzle—sharing motifs, figures, compositional strategies, and colors.
She currently lives and works in Italy, immersed in a world of candies, little monsters, and toys.
