Chaos Temple 

with Elijah Burgher
PAINTING & DRAWING 606 001
3 credits | $175 lab fee

What happens when we pick up a stick of charcoal or a brush dipped in ink? This course takes as its starting point William S. Burroughs’s dictum that “all art is magical in origin. . . . Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen.” Magic offers artists a set of imaginative tools with which to think otherwise about the work they do. Following an examination of concepts and imagery from witchcraft, hermeticism, alchemy, and the occult, students will explore the materials, processes, and psychic investments of the studio through the lens of spellcraft. Drawing will be emphasized as a research methodology and unique medium of expression. As part of a larger inquiry into symbols, we will study various examples of “unknown languages,” such as the myth of Odin’s discovery of the runes, Austin Osman Spare’s sigil magic, the Martian scripts of the 19th-century spiritual medium Hélène Smith, asemic writing, and the automatic techniques of the surrealists, through slide lectures and guided drawing exercises. James George Frazer’s principles of sympathetic magic will be used to think differently about both figurative representation and the specificity and history of materials and tools in drawing, collage, and painting. Additional themes will include ritual, sacrifice, divination, chance, and hauntology. We will look at the work of artists including Jesse Bransford, Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale, Judith Noble, Marjorie Cameron, Wifredo Lam, and František Kupka. Readings will include “Reclaiming Animism” by Isabelle Stengers and excerpts from “Splinter Test” by Genesis P-Orridge; screenings will include films by Maya Deren and Harry Smith. Using James George Frazer’s “Law of Similarity” to think about figurative representation and wish fulfillment, students will make “cave drawings” with tools created from found materials in the landscape and inks we make together in class. The course will culminate in an indoor or outdoor installation of finished pieces.

Winter Session runs from January 4 - 17, 2026. Classes are held every day during the session (including weekends) from 9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. EST

Using painting, drawing, and printmaking, Elijah Burgher works at the crossroads of representation and language, figuration and abstraction, and the real and imagined. Drawing from mythology, ancient history, the occult, and ritual magick, Burgher cultivates a highly intimate code of symbolism to investigate the personal and cultural dynamics of desire, love, subcultural formation, and the history of abstraction. His work has been featured in museums and gallaries around the world including the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He is the co-author of Sperm Cult with Richard Hawkins. Burgher received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. He is represented by PPOW in New York, Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Ivan Gallery in Bucharest.

Elijah Burgher, installation view of A List of Wishes at (northern) Western Exhibitions in Skokie, IL, 2024