FABIOLA ALONDRA

Psychologistics—the title of your current exhibition (March 6—April 19, 2025) at MARCH in New York City—is a neologism that interweaves psychology and logistics. Psychology originates from the Greek psychē (meaning “soul, breath, or spirit”) and logos (meaning “word, discourse, or study”). In ancient Greece, psychē referred to an individual’s life force or incorporeal essence. Logistics has its roots in Greek terms associated with calculation and originates from military and mathematical contexts. This synthesis signifies a dynamic interplay between inner thought and intentional gesture. Through this transformation, the intangible becomes tangible. The contrast between what is known and what remains unseen creates psychological tension. The more ordinary the scenes in your paintings, the eerier and more unusual they feel.

⧫ How did you arrive at this title? ⧫

GREG BURAK

I began to use one-point perspective recently as a way to better understand the relationships between the elements in the paintings. I found that in applying it, the relationship between the figures and the space itself seemed to have a psychological aspect that felt exciting. The syntax was different, and it complicated everything. The work shifted away from discrete narratives and toward a more detached psychological tone, which was based on the attitudes of the figures and their relationship to the space. The title was a response to that shift in the work.

Greg Burak
Woman & Leaping Dog, 2023
Oil on linen
36 x 32 inches

BURAK

This concept enters the work through peculiar logic in each of the paintings, in the sense that to resolve the pictures, new rules are applied beyond a previous set and are based more or less on intuition. Most of these paintings underwent various changes, including the painting out of figures, animals, and other objects from previous states. In many of them, narrative elements were removed, and new ones were added. This created new sets of relationships that I couldn’t have anticipated, and they were often more intriguing to me than my original concept.

Portions of the initial idea remained but were now out of context – resulting in elements of the paintings responding to things that were no longer present. Most of these paintings contain some false start hidden within the picture. I think that this removal process and slowing down, in part, produces an effect. Painting a work over a sustained period was a method I hadn’t explored much previously– and responding to a painting over weeks or months allowed for unexpected conclusions.

ALONDRA

⧫ You mentioned that for the painting Woman and Leaping Dog, you viewed these elements as having a directional force and a sense of decay (similar to music). In music, decay describes the gradual decrease in volume or intensity of a sound after it has been initiated. I love the concept of decay as present in your work. Could you take us deeper here? ⧫

BURAK

While painting Woman and Leaping Dog, I listened to a piano piece by composer Morton Feldman. The notes struck me as colliding with one another after slowly and quietly dissipating—much like a well-aimed shot in a pool. In music, this is called decay. I began to contemplate how an element beyond its immediate location can carry energy and how it might influence or collide with other elements at a distance. I tried to apply this thinking to that painting—considering how much energy the angular shadow shape had in the bottom left, if it could reach the dog, and whether the dog had enough energy to reach the picture frame on the right. It became another way for me to think about moving through the paintings.

ALONDRA

“Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still.” (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1). This line is from a scene where Macbeth hallucinates a dagger that drives him to murder, suggesting that supernatural forces manipulate his vision.

⧫ What is your connection to the supernatural and the occult? How did your interest in the esoteric develop, and how has it influenced your work? Are there specific sources, such as books or films? ⧫

BURAK

I was raised Catholic, which was the structure around which these interests arose. That imagery reappeared in my life after I began painting, which was in college, and by way of looking at historical paintings. Familiarity with those subjects was an entry point in investigating that type of constructed painting, although it took some years. I was interested in other kinds of painting at the start. Macbeth, a factor in the paintings, is a play I’ve read and reread many times. I am fascinated by the insane dread of the plot and the macabre imagery. I’ve watched Scanners a thousand times.

ALONDRA

Your painting, Death of Macbeth, is a striking anomaly in this exhibition. It’s the only piece featuring a landscape and the sole one evoking themes of death and violence. The landscape resembles a fleeting vision; if we were to close our eyes and then open them again, it would vanish. The patterns formed by the grass on the ground read like symbols ready to shift at any moment, awaiting interpretation. The unusual choice to portray the naked body facing away from the viewer further intensifies the scene’s oddity.

Additionally, this marks the first of your paintings to include ‘wonderful blood’ (a reference to the esteemed Medieval scholar Caroline Walker Bynum’s book, which argues that Christ’s blood, both as an object and a symbolic force, played a central role in late medieval art, literature, devotion, and theology). The blood pouring from Macbeth’s neck evokes the stigmata seen in Renaissance paintings, where the lines are drawn so straight they seem to defy gravity, shooting directly upward toward the sky. This gesture alone underscores the painting’s surreal quality. I am particularly fascinated by the blood that seductively runs like a river down his left leg and its role as the punctum in your painting, Death of Macbeth.

⧫ Share your thoughts on the blood in this painting, its intentional placement within the composition, and what it represents for you. ⧫

Antonello da Messina, Saint Sebastian, c. 1477–1479

Perhaps, in a way, the blood in the painting acts like actual blood, traveling to the areas where it is needed. Baroque painting had some very ecstatic uses of blood; I had also been considering Caravaggio’s Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Blood from his neck sprays onto the bottom of the canvas, and Caravaggio uses it to sign his name, which is both playful and psychotic.

ALONDRA

The calm and structured logic of Piero della Francesca, the emotional depth of Caravaggio, and the aesthetics infused with just the right amount of descriptive detail in Antonello da Messina are some of the essences your work draws from.

⧫ You often draw inspiration from the Italian Renaissance in your work. What about this fascinating period continues to captivate you in your practice? ⧫

BURAK

I love the quattrocento in particular because of its poetic use of systems, which I’ve been considering lately while painting. Many of those paintings possess all the qualities of reality while still being unreal – there is a captivating strangeness, an uncanny plasticity.

Greg Burak
The Recollection, 2025
Oil on linen
33 15/16 x 30 inches

ALONDRA

⧫ You are reading John White’s The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (1967), which explores pictorial space during the Renaissance and its roots in antiquity. How has this study influenced your work? ⧫

BURAK

The most interesting part of that book for me has been the discussion of the proto Renaissance—how the use of perspective during that time included effects similar to how we actually see, with the sides of the images distorting instead of following a strict scheme. He wrote about an artist I was unfamiliar with – Maso Di Banco – and his painting Pope Sylvester I Turning Away A Dragon and Reviving Its Victims – which demonstrates that phenomenon and is a really stunning painting. Reading about these variations on different systems was liberating, as I also have managed to develop a serious addiction to drawing manuals that offer only what seem to be immutable laws. At the end of the day, it’s all discretionary, and it’s what works for the picture.

Greg Burak
The Conversation, 2024-2025
Oil on linen
59 ¾ x 51 15/16 inches

BURAK

Piero Della Francesca’s Flagellation is famously precise, to the degree of constructing that space as if it were an architectural plan. At best, I play fast and loose with the type of knowledge he utilizes. My paintings often convey a series of concessions to a logic I can’t quite grasp, but I believe the tension created by these concessions leads to intriguing situations. It’s the tension between flatness and the evolution of space in the picture. This is an ancient game in painting.

The Conversation was a testing ground for solutions to problems I could not resolve in previous works. While making this painting, I encountered new and unexpected problems. This is good because it pushes everything forward, which is how I approach painting. I hope that this painting strives toward knowledge.

Piero Della Francesca’s work has always been a touchstone for me, and I’m sure it always will be. Perhaps more than anything, I appreciate the seriousness of his endeavors and the pervasive silence in his work.  

ALONDRA

I want to conclude this conversation by discussing hands. I love the hands in your paintings; their movements and actions reveal more than a face does. They serve as gestural offerings. In The Conversation, four hands are visible and beautifully positioned to create a flow, much like reading a book. The structure of each hand suggests they are transmitting secret knowledge that only the learned might possess. In The Second Meeting, the woman on the far left uses both hands to beckon the viewer toward the edge of the painting, into the unknown, while the second figure watches, captivated. In The Recollection, the figure’s gentle hand glides over her neck as she gazes toward the swirling spirit of the smoke, a curved shape that mirrors her arm and hand.

⧫ The way you paint hands feels deliberate; they appear symbolic. They are essential elements of your artwork. How do you conceive of hands and their role in your work? Do you have any specific connection to how a hand conveys meaning? ⧫

Distorted Ames room as seen by subject, p. 97, from The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art by Michael Kubovy, 1986

Details from Greg Burak, The Conversation, 2024-2025