Art | The Unnerving Candy-Coated Compositions of Cristina Burns

I have a good idea for a scare piece for an evening news broadcast or —better yet— a conservative religious program. We’re about to enter music festival season. Across the country teenagers will be converging to see their favorite EDM DJs play music for thousands of shrieking lookalike fans. Much like the glitzy, glurgy, sugar-coated music they consume by the spoonful, these teenagers will all be dressed in bright neon, fuzzy leggings and glow sticks. It’s just harmless fun, right?

Above image: Cristina Burns, Magical Ingredients

Well, what happens when the music stops? When these wayward, impressionable youth get into the bad drugs? It’s only a matter of time before— yes, of course— they’re going to start a black magic coven. This is the satanic endgame of their worldly culture. It’s 2 a.m. and Steve Aoki is playing somewhere in California; do you know where your child is?

If these baby ravers were to start a cult I imagine they’d make work similar to Naples-based artist Cristina Burns. Born in 1982 in El Peurto de Santa Maria, Spain, Burns moved to Italy and began “an artistic career basing her research on the study of colors, on the world of toys and on hyper contemporary materials, where kaleidoscopic images and enchanted microcosms are the elements that affect and stimulate the subconscious of the viewer.”

In short, Burns is interested in, “candles, little monsters and toys.”

Her photographs are like still lifes with a layer of candy-coated horror. Cute, fun, humorous and unnerving, her work has the same playfully grim sense of humor you’d find in an artist like Barnaby Barford. They share some qualities with contemporary pop culture. I feel comfortable saying these pieces have the drugginess of Adventure Time and the adorable evil of Jhonen Vasquez comics.

Like the symmetry of many of these pieces, Burns balances the light and dark features in each work. Wide-eyed skulls are prominently featured, but they look like they’re buzzing on a sugar rush. Their message is tethered to the bright chaos surrounding them. It’s like the pinks, the neons and the smiling ceramic mice are trying to distract you from the violence humming underneath each piece. Like all good horror, the fear emerges from what you don’t notice immediately. It takes a moment to realize that the dishes of pink candy are shaped like brains, and there’s a fork stuck in them; that lizards are devouring doll heads, and that severed limbs are sticking haphazardly out of tiny treasure chests. Burns connects this Lisa Frank nightmare to the viewer through the use of porcelain domino masks that have eyes staring directly at you.

The skulls are prominent, often unadorned. The fluff surrounding each reads like distraction, comfortable things meant to take one’s mind off those grinning symbols of mortality. The skulls influence their environments, though. If they’re surrounded by flowers, the flowers will be twisted in the reflection on the skull’s surface.

Perhaps at one time the candy was just candy and the ceramic bunnies were smiling in a way that wouldn’t make my skin crawl. The skulls are insidious, though. Their influence bleeds through. You can’t hide forever.

Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Writer at CFile.

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