The exhibition “Generalized Hospitals: The Luke Luke and Laura Laura story... Just one more thing!” is the latest collaboration by Darrin Martin and Torsten Zenas Burns including videos, sculptures, print and jigsaw puzzle reliefs reframing elements of nostalgic popular culture into contemporary dialogue with ecological concerns and interspecies relationships. Characters from soap operas and sequential art are reimagined and recontextualized to consider new potential mutations and cohabitations to thrive in a changing environment. Transformation is unboxed and solicited through multiple puzzle pieces and videos interweaving recognizable characters from television commingled with their new variants. Technologies of science and forecasted ritual suggest ways that characters may merge human and non-human characteristics into new bodies of possibility.
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 3rd, 11:00 AM- 3:00 PM
Open Saturdays and Sundays 11:00 AM- 3:00 PM and by appointment. On view September 3rd through September 11th, 2022.
The Tack Room
4690 Live Oak Canyon Road
La Verne, CA 91750
Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin
Biography
Burns and Martin met at Alfred University where they both received Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees. Burns went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in video and performance art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. Martin earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in media and sculpture from The University of California, San Diego in 2000. They began collaborating in 1998 and have based their videos and installations on their research into diverse speculative fictions including re-imagined educational practices, appropriated horror genres, animation choreographies, cosplay, and cryptid-human love stories.
Together they have participated in residencies at Eyebeam, Signal Culture, and The Experimental Television Center. Their single channel videos have screened at numerous venues including The Museum of Art & Design, Pacific Film Archive, Aurora Picture Show, Migrating Forms, Video Dumbo, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Madrid Museum of Contemporary Art, Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media, Oberhausen Short Film and Video Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Spectacle Theater, 18th Athens Digital Arts Festival, and the Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival. Their multimedia installations have been exhibited at Eyebeam, The Lab, Krowswork Gallery, Fosdick Nelson Gallery at Alfred University, Hobart and William-Smith Davis Gallery, and Zhangzhou Museum of Art in China. Select videos are distributed by VTape, Ontario, Canada.
Torsten Zenas Burns Helsinki, Finland / holyokeresearcher@gmail.com / http://www.torstenzenasburns.com
Darrin Martin Oakland, California, USA / darrinthomasmartin@gmail.com / http://www.darrinmartin.com