Jeremy Burleson

Jeremy Burleson (b. 1981) is a Bay Area Artist who joined NIAD Art Center in 2003. Working primarily with masking tape and paper, he creates lyrical lampshade sculptures and ink drawings of stacked animals, balloons, food, and figures. 

Over many years, Burleson has developed his own exacting construction methods: his sculptures are handcrafted from tightly rolled paper tubes that intersect to form skeletal, open cages. The tubes are coated with bright pops of colorful ink and bound together by several types of tape. Many of these objects represent lamps and can function as such: they are designed to hang from the ceiling and contain lightbulbs, which illuminate the sculptures from within and intensify the dramatic web of shadows they cast around the space. 

Other paper sculptures are modeled after medical devices, hypodermic needles, stethoscopes, and handcuffs. Burleson effectively subverts and pokes fun at the original context of these objects by rendering each in the most lightweight, malleable material. 

Burleson has exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, the Museum of Northern California Art, Bedford Gallery, Narrative Gallery, BAMP/FA, Sonoma State University, Ruth’s Table, and Chico Art Center. His work is in the permanent collections of the OMCA, Clif Bar and Company, BAMP/FA, and the MAD Musée in Belgium. 

With masking tape and paper, Jeremy Burleson has built a flood of highly detailed medical instruments – hyper-realistic and quasi-workable versions of stethoscopes, ventilators and syringes. Burleson also works out his interest in all things medical on paper, often combining figures with rows of bottles, syringes and balloons. His focus on medically related subject matter walks a fine line between fascination and repulsion.

Also, using paper, but rolling it tightly to create a tube of sorts, Burleson crafts lyrical lamp shapes. Vaguely allegorical, the structures are designed to hang from the ceiling, but some are large enough to be placed on the floor. This interest in lamps may have originated during an accident while on a shopping trip to a local warehouse store.

Throughout all of Burleson’s work runs the thread of strange theatricality created by early pop artists like Claes Oldenburg and Red Grooms.