From December 2024 to March 2025, Gina Burri participated in an artist residency in Chicago, organized by the Lucerne-Chicago Sister Cities Association, a partnership existing since 1998. Gina Burri, a graphic designer from Lucerne, used this time to further deepen her work in the field of artistic printmaking. During her stay, she worked at Spudnik Press, where she learned and explored a new printing technique: monoprinting. With this experimental approach, she realized several projects.
Chicago’s active and supportive printmaking community greatly inspired her. She frequently encountered printmaking as a medium in both gallery and museum exhibitions. In addition to the connections she was able to make, the residency influenced her artistic practice and gave her a significant push toward a deeper engagement with printmaking. Now, Gina Burri is pursuing a master’s degree in printmaking in London and plans to continue working in this field.
At the core of her artistic exploration was the color grey and its multifaceted nature, which she studied inspired through the lens of architecture. When does grey truly become grey? And when does it begin to shift into another color? These questions served as the starting point for her series „12 Floors“, comprising 84 monotypes. The monoprint technique allowed her an experimental approach: through layering and overlapping, light, shadow, and texture interact in ever-changing ways. Each composition consists of two to three superimposed color layers, creating subtle tonal gradations.
The works are inspired by urban architecture and its materials. Atmosphere emerges in reflections and in the play of light on metallic surfaces. Thin vertical lines lend the compositions an upward movement, evoking steel beams – the skeletal framework of skyscrapers before they are clad in glass and concrete. This raw, unfinished form of architecture symbolizes a transitional state – just like the grey in this series, which does not exist as a fixed color, but as an in-between of light and shadow, defined by constant change. Grey is not merely a midpoint between black and white, but a world of its own, full of nuance.
The geometric structure of the works is closely connected to the city of Chicago. The strict grid in which the prints are arranged reflects the fundamental structure of the city – the regular pattern of its streets, the sharp lines of its high-rises. Yet within each print, this order begins to dissolve: lines break, gradients blur, textures thicken or disintegrate. This tension between structure and dissolution reflects the dialogue between built order and atmospheric transformation.
This series is a study of transformation – of the mutability of color, the interplay between material and atmosphere, and the moment when architecture, light, and perception begin to interact.
We would like to congratulate Gina Burri who was nominated to exhibit her work as part of a group show at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago which will be on view until June 27, 2025, and will later present it at a gallery in Kriens, Switzerland.
Click here to learn more about Gina Burri’s work and here to follow her on Instagram.
