"The recent paintings I am made for Ivan Gallery’s Art Rotterdam booth loosely revolve around the image of the Roman emperor, Heliogabalus (also known as Elagabalus). These works are made with acrylic paint on studio rags and material cut from failed or abandoned paintings, which are then mounted on panels. Many are composed of ripped or torn pieces of canvas and linen collaged together. Even when painted over completely, the seams of the surface show through or the history of the materials is visible along the edge of the panel. They remind me of mummy rags and bathroom graffiti. I am also looking closely at Fayum tomb portraiture and the grisaille paintings of Mantegna and Bellini. Some paintings draw on my work with sigil magic and occult abstraction to explore and amplify the solar phallic cults of antiquity, Heliogabalus being an outstanding and perverse example of one." (Elijah Burgher, March 2026)
Elijah Burgher (b. 1978) is an American artist living and working in Berlin, Germany.
His works have been exhibited in solo and group shows in various contexts among which: 2025 ”I Believe I Know”, Tomayko Foundation, Pittsburgh, ”City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago”, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, ”Ghost Image”, 2023 ”Transcendental Arrangements”, Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, 2020-21 “Intimacy: New Queer Art from Berlin and Beyond” at Schwulesmuseum, Berlin, 2020 “Scrivere Disegnando: When Language Seeks Its Other” at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; 2019 “New Age, New Age: Strategies for Survival”, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, “IL Sperm Cult”, LAXArt, Hollywood, “Queer Abstraction: Contemporary Queer Abstraction”, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, just to have a few.
Upcoming participations in 2026: ”A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit”, Palm Springs Art Museum, ”Tarot!: Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions”, Morgan Library & Museum, New York.
Elijah Burgher’s artistic endeavour is infused with magic, employing occult iconographies from different esoteric systems in creating his specific abstract language and his own formal and meaningful grammar of emblems and sigils, symbols of wishes and desires. His projects develop like rituals of enchantment with references from mysticism, literature, from art’s history as well as his personal one.