Exploring the hidden language of structure and support, Charlie Burtenshaw’s work uncovers the delicate balance between care and collapse within the built environment. His practice investigates how systems of maintenance and refusal operate subtly in everyday spaces, revealing the unseen tensions that sustain or threaten physical and emotional stability. Burtenshaw employs salvaged materials and hand-altered surfaces, crafting paintings and mixed-media works that resemble provisional architectural forms—layered, braced, and precariously balanced. These works evoke the fragile infrastructures that shape lived experience, where endurance and vulnerability coexist. Rooted in a keen sensitivity to spatial relationships and the affective charge of materials, Burtenshaw’s interventions bring attention to how bodies and environments bear weight, support one another, and sometimes verge on disappearance. His nuanced approach highlights overlooked aspects of care embedded in the material world, prompting reflection on how physical spaces hold emotional significance. Through this interplay of materiality and concept, Burtenshaw invites viewers to reconsider the politics of support and neglect within contemporary life, encouraging an awareness of the fragile systems—both tangible and intangible—that sustain human experience. ...
