{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Bad at Sports Episode 928: Robert Burnier","description":"Recorded live at the Stony Island Arts Bank with the Chicago Architecture Biennial Robert Burnier joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews for a wide-ranging conversation that moves between sculpture, drawing, divination systems, urban planning, Mondrian, Agnes Martin, and the politics of place. Known for his bent and torsioned aluminum works\u2014objects that hold gesture, decision, and duration in their skins\u2014Burnier talks about a recent body of drawings made while traveling between Europe and South Africa. Working on translucent washi paper, the pieces attempt to register light, color, and spatial memory rather than image, emerging from time spent in Cape Town\u2019s Bo-Kaap and the erased landscape of District Six. The discussion connects these experiences to Burnier\u2019s upbringing in Oak Park and to larger questions about how communities are structured, protected, or destroyed through seemingly mundane formal decisions. From there the conversation spirals outward into the role of myth, tarot, and Yoruba divination as models for thinking through chaos, and into the slow time of art as a counterpoint to the speed of contemporary media. Lorezetti\u2019s Allegory of Good and Bad Government becomes a touchstone for considering how abstraction can carry ethical or civic attitude without becoming propaganda, and how form itself can function as content. Throughout, Burnier frames sculpture and drawing as \u201csites of possibility\u201d rather than statements\u2014tuning forks for thought that ask viewers to complete the work through their own duration and attention. The episode closes with talk of new material directions following a recent Pollock-Krasner grant and an ongoing commitment to work that never fully resolves, but keeps adjusting\u2014open, provisional, and in motion. Images courtesy of Andrew Rafacz Gallery. Zulua \u0108 iela Kapo, 2025 (top) Acrylic on aluminum Nebulaj \u0106eloj (Soyinka IV), 2023 (bottom) Acrylic on aluminum   Robert Burnier \u2013 https:\/\/www.robertburnier.com Andrew Rafacz Gallery \u2013 https:\/\/andrewrafacz.com Corvi-Mora (London) \u2013 https:\/\/www.corvi-mora.com Bad at Sports \u2013 https:\/\/badatsports.com Lumpen Radio (WLPN 105.5 FM) \u2013 https:\/\/lumpenradio.com Agnes Martin \u2013 https:\/\/www.moma.org\/artists\/3787 Ambrogio Lorenzetti \u2013 The Allegory of Good and Bad Government https:\/\/www.wga.hu\/html_m\/l\/lorenzet\/ambrogio\/governme\/index.html Bo-Kaap (Cape Town) \u2013 https:\/\/www.capetown.travel\/areas\/bo-kaap\/ Buddhism \u2013 https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Buddhism Chicago Architecture Biennial \u2013 https:\/\/www.chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org Christopher Wool \u2013 https:\/\/gagosian.com\/artists\/christopher-wool\/ District Six Museum \u2013 https:\/\/www.districtsix.co.za Oak Park, Illinois \u2013 https:\/\/www.oak-park.us Piet Mondrian \u2013 https:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/art\/artists\/piet-mondrian-1654 School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) \u2013 https:\/\/www.saic.edu Schopenhauer \u2013 https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/schopenhauer\/ Stony Island Arts Bank \u2013 https:\/\/rebuild-foundation.org\/site\/stony-island-arts-bank Takashi Murakami \u2013 https:\/\/www.perrotin.com\/artists\/Takashi_Murakami\/1 Tarot \u2013 https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/tarot Yoruba Divination (If\u00e1) \u2013 https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Ifa ","author_name":"Bad at Sports","author_url":"http:\/\/badatsports.com","html":"