In his „Self-Emergent / Reverse Glass Paintings“, a unique technique of painting behind glass, Michael Burges uses colors and various leaf metals: silver, palladium, gold platinum, 23.75 ct gold.
His reverse glass paintings show an extraordinary color presence and esthetic precision. But they don‘t tell, they don‘t interpret anything. They act and interact with light and reflection, with „natural“ shapes and structures and their interferences, with „alchemical“ processes of diffusion and oxidation, with the emergence of matter.
In this sense they are a painterly analysis and simulation of phenomena, and at the same time an exploration of our interpretive perceptions. The glass pane functions simultaneously as a division and a portal of intensified insight.
Insofar they are more like painterly objects, without narration but with an enormous presence of light and rhythm. They evoke a sense of “visual sound“, – the sound of painting.