Andrea

Burgay

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Andrea Burgay's work evokes a sense of haunting nostalgia, where decaying materials and books are reborn into textured, layered compositions. Her pieces explore the themes of destruction and creation, embodying the passage of time and the persistence of memory through tactile, almost archaeological remnants. With a quiet intensity, Burgay’s work suggests a delicate balance between fragility and resilience, inviting viewers to reflect on the beauty that emerges from disintegration.

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In my work, transformative processes revive and reconstruct castoff objects and materials through the lens of memory, emotion, and imagination. By repeatedly adding and removing layers of materials—destroying and reassembling—I create a process that mirrors the natural cycles of creation, decay, and rebirth. The resulting works bear the markings of these visceral transformations, visually manifesting the passage of time. They encompass both the inevitable pain of loss and the potential for growth and renewal.

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Collage is a way to reexamine the materials and images that inundate our lives, viewing them as active components open to potential transformation. Collage begins with materials that come imbued with meanings, histories, and our own individual connections. Through collage processes, we respond to these materials, physically and conceptually breaking them down, then forming new connections between disparate elements—creating new meanings and stories. Collage carries forth the idea that anything—from the materials used in art, to our lives and the world around us—holds the potential for reinvention and renewal.

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I am also interested in how the process of creating a work imparts specific meaning to it. My approach involves a sequence of connective actions followed by destructive actions. This process serves as a metaphor for themes I frequently explore, including cycles of life, death, decay, rebirth, and the reconstruction of memories. These ideas also guide my collaborative curatorial project, Cut Me Up Magazine, where artists respond to the published artworks by cutting, reconfiguring, and transforming them into new pieces.

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The process of arranging and attaching layers of paper, then tearing, carving, or taking them apart, creates a cycle that takes time, and consideration to complete, while also mirroring the effects of the passage of time—weathering, destruction, and regrowth. I embrace chance formations created by even the slightest movements. Random associations between the lines, shapes, or textures of fragments feed into the work and reflect the forces of nature and chance. I’ve been finding recently that after thinking a piece is complete, it often needs one final full transformation to completely remove it from its original form.

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Andrea Burgay is a visual artist from Syracuse, NY, currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work combines collage, sculpture and found materials to elevate the overlooked and the mundane via transformative physical processes. Through a process of adding and removing layers of handmade and collected materials she presents a physical manifestation of the passage of time, destruction and decay, with a sense of potential renewal.

Burgay is founder and editor of Cut Me Up, a participatory collage magazine and curatorial project. Each issue presents a curated selection of original mixed-media artworks, intended for readers to deconstruct, and transform into new artworks.

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