Solo show: Ian Burns (over)

hilger contemporary hilger contemporary Dorotheergasse 5 A-1010 Vienna Austria (city map) Send E-mail tel +43 (0)1 - 512 53 15 30 www.hilger.at

Ian Burns’s sculptural machines are made up of rudimentary materials of housing construction. They are highly visual and engaging. The very ways in which they function invoke curiosity, the materials and methods of construction openly explain the functioning of the device, and the humor at play all serve to engage the viewer in a unique and personal experience. These three dimensional structures generate the style and format of visual images we recognize as informational or narrative based yet reveal it as little more than the entertainment it is typically consumed as. In this way they offer a more engaging viewing experience than the contemporary technological means of delivering such screen based information. In that case the three dimensional structure that supports the flattened space of the screen is all but invisible to us, but with these sculptures all is revealed.
They are investigations of the experience of visual perception and the cultural dominance of the language of screen based moving images. Topically the works are overtly political, yet the bigger question is the level to which we are desensitized to the nature of such images.