Ernesto Burgos was born in Santa Clara, California, in 1979 and lives and works in New York. Working between painting and sculpture, Burgos creates wall-based and freestanding works that transform ordinary materials into dynamic, fluid and spatially complex forms.
His practice is rooted in a physical process of folding, tearing, cutting, bending and layering materials such as cardboard, fibreglass and resin. These actions remain visible in the final work, preserving the tension between construction and collapse, control and chance. The resulting sculptures often appear suspended in motion, as though capturing a transformation still in progress.
Burgos’s work brings the expressive energy of post-war abstraction into three dimensions. His surfaces are marked by gesture, colour and material pressure, while their sculptural forms extend beyond the conventions of painting. The works occupy a space between object and image, balancing raw physicality with an almost pictorial sense of rhythm and movement.
His work has been included in institutional exhibitions such as Bienal 2013: Here Is Where We Jump at El Museo del Barrio, New York; Visible Architects: New Chilean Art at a Global Crossroads at the Museum of the City of New York and the University of Maryland; Granpalazzo at Palazzo Rospigliosi, Zagarolo; and 40 Years | 40 Artists | 40 Artworks at Kunstmuseum Magdeburg.
His work is held in the collection of Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany.