Home > Upcoming Exhibitions > Nothing Is Impossible > Karl Burke

KARL BURKE 3.5.8, 2010 (2nd Floor) birch plywood One hour and ten minutes of light, 2010 (2nd Floor) HD video 7 increments, 2010 (510 Sampsonia Way) galvanized steel Karl Burke, 3.5.8, 2010 Karl Burke unhinges the natural and the man-made to assert the here and now. Using sculptural installation, sound works, film, photography and ambient site-specific installations, he enacts subtle interventions into both indoor and outdoor spaces. The three works in this exhibition are concerned with our relationship to and perceptions of our three-dimensional world endeavoring to form a physical and emotive relationships between the art object, space/place and the viewer. The works explore the logic and the scientific interplay with nature. They question space, place and perception, and affirm the role of the viewer in the construction of environment. Burke draws out a certain inbetween-ness, and the potential of this space, to assert the present. The formal sculptural work, entitled 3.5.8, frames an empty three-dimensional space. Its title, form and scale are determined by the Fibonacci sequence- a recursive series of numbers following the rule that any number is the sum of the previous two. This sequence, first formulated in ancient India, operates mathematically and yet is also found in biological settings. The conflation of mathematical and logical forms with that of nature offers a promise of a rationale to the irrational. Burke’s work sometimes betrays scientific logic to affirm poetic possibility. This is the case with the video work One hour and ten minutes of light. This real-time video work records a constructed apparatus in a Pittsburgh landscape at dusk. This apparatus is a metal frame upon which a rectangular metal sheet with an aspect ratio of 16:9 is suspended. The ratio employed in the work references the cinematic and representation of the natural environment. With shifts in time and as reflecting sunlight from the sheet of metal dissipates, it is replaced with artificial light illuminating the surrounding woodland behind the construction. Karl Burke, 7 increments, 2010 Burke’s third work, 7 increments, is outside of the gallery spaces. It takes the form of a large sculptural intervention that is located in a vacant parking lot at 510 Sampsonia Way. This work is made from the type of galvanized steel sections typically used to construct urban fencing. The work consists of seven independent square units each measuring 12 ft by 12 ft set equidistant in a straight line. Burke employs these modular forms to frame the environment they inhabit. Acting like a form of tunnel, its vertical lines and physical scale dissect its surrounding buildings, trees and sky. This configuration and its deliberate use of scale dwarfs the viewer, encouraging them to re-access their personal physicality and relationship with the objects that surround them. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include; Karl Burke, Flashpoint Gallery, Washington DC (solo); Method A, Rua Red, Tallaght, Dublin (solo); What happens next is a secret, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; all 2010; Automatic, Auto Italia, London and Pallas Contemporary Projects, Dublin; Soundtrack for a Day, Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo (solo); Volume V: I think I remember, Temple Bar Galleries, Dublin; David Beattie and Karl Burke, studio 1.1, London, all 2009; Spaces, Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, (solo) 2008; Common place, Dublin, 2007. Burke lives and works in Dublin and Sligo, Ireland.