Between Structure and Spirit

Collective Z Gallery is pleased to present Between Structure and Spirit, a solo exhibition of New York–based artist Bill Burns. The exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper that navigate the charged space between discipline and intuition, the material and the transcendent. This is Burns’ first exhibition with Collective Z and his second solo show in New York. Burns’ work has always operated at the threshold between the made and the felt. Trained as a designer — with over a decade as Senior Designer at Pottery Barn and a BFA from California College of the Arts — he brings a rigorous, compositional intelligence to painting that never forecloses on the unexpected. His process begins with writing and sketching, but yields to material instinct: layers accumulate, colors assert themselves, and images emerge less resolved than discovered. In Between Structure and Spirit, that threshold is the subject. The exhibition presents a unified body of work that probes, from every angle, how structure becomes spirit and spirit becomes form. Color moves through these paintings with a quality that is simultaneously architectural and atmospheric — luminous in some canvases, urgent in others — always sustained by Burns’ conviction that sensation can generate meaning, and that paint, given enough time and attention, can become light. Some works press upward with a devotional persistence, color straining through earlier layers toward clarity. Others carry the heat of a present moment, insisting that the world’s pressures are not separate from the studio but continuous with it. Together, they form a sustained argument for painting as a form of seeking — not doctrinal, but no less sincere. The works do not preach; they breathe. Burns’ practice is rooted in a deeply held belief that art can offer solace, hope, and resilience in uncertain times. The paintings ask viewers not to analyze but to feel — to enter the space of the canvas and allow it to shift something interior. Each work sustains the conviction that the search for light, in the world and within the self, is among painting’s most enduring responsibilities. This is Burns’ second solo exhibition in New York and his first at Collective Z. His work has been shown at Russeck Gallery in SoHo, Art Gotham in the East Village, and Greenpoint Gallery, among other venues. In 2025, ten of his paintings were installed at the Empire State Building.

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