EXHIBITION STATEMENT

In moments of upheaval, the ghosts of images from the past take on new relevance. Histories repeat themselves but in distorted form, refracted by the breaks between eras, the differences between their media, and their distinct understandings of the world. 

Darrin Martin’s exhibition of remixed archival video and sculptural works, Stacked Artifacts explores these dynamics with particular attention to queer histories - both personal and collective - reflecting on the past in light of the promise and perils of the present, grappling with loss and change, and struggling to situate these histories within the broader assemblage of reality.

Works in the show are threaded together, formally, by their common engagement with the degradation of the moving image, hinging on the paradox in media and its artifacts, i.e., that their obsolescence and failure to remain faithful to the past simultaneously opens them up to unexpected combinations and novel interpretations, contributing to the realization of unanticipated futures.

In a large, two-channel video projection, spanning the gallery’s walls, Darrin collages together processed and damaged home movies, vintage gay porn, documentary agricultural videos, and a Cold War fiction film about the end of the world. Another piece presents a floral arrangement living and dying in a seamless loop, interrupted only by taffy-like jumps in time that stagger the changes in the flowers’ vitality and decay.  A third piece features a thin, door-like relief with carved geometric patterns, extending onto the floor in segments mounted with video screens.

Whether in three-dimensional objects or as moving-images that wrap the gallery’s architecture, Darrin presents media and memory not merely as cognitive instruments, but as integral to the fabric of lived experience. His works are psychological interiorities, comprised of layered, shifting images and associations. They are bodies marked by age and experience, preserving traces of the past in the texture of their flesh. Rich with meaning and memory, they are rooms and social contexts, layered across time, marked by loss, and open to rediscovery.

EVENT

ADDITIONAL IMAGES

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Darrin Martin is an artist and educator. Through video, sculpture, and print-based installations, his works engage the synesthetic qualities of perception. Concerned with what is gained and lost in the process of translation as mediated by both old and new technologies and influenced by his own experiences with hearing loss, his current projects consider notions of accessibility through the use of tactility, sonic analogies, and audio descriptions. His videos have screened internationally at festivals and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY); Pacific Film Archive (CA), Impakt Festival (Netherlands), and European Media Art Festival (Germany). His installations have exhibited at venues including The Kitchen (NY), University of Toronto (Canada), and Grand Central Art Center (CA). In 2015, he held solo exhibitions at Aggregate Space Gallery (CA), Art Space on Main (CA), and Art & Design Gallery (KS).

Martin frequently collaborates with artist Torsten Zenas Burns, building diverse speculative fictions around re-imagined educational practices. Their works have been included in screenings and exhibitions in venues including The Oberhausen Short Film Festival, The Paris/Berlin International, Eyebeam, and Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn. They recently mounted an exhibition titled “ARK3: The Workshop Scenarios” at the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University in Alfred, NY that was re-imagined and augmented last summer at Krowswork Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Martin received his art degrees with an emphasis on video and sculpture from Alfred University’s School of Art and Design (BFA) and University of California, San Diego (MFA). He has held artist residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Eyebeam, Experimental Television Center, and Signal Culture. Martin also occasionally curates video screenings, most recently, an exhibition of works by 18 artists for Vanity Projects in New York City and Parsons Hall Project Space in Holyoke, MA, titled “Tooth and Nail.”