Ian Burns’ kinetic dioramas and video feed works have engaged with subjects as diverse as the war in Iraq, TV culture, colonialism, and art history. Using plain wood and primitive electronics, and often incorporating household objects and other assorted junk, Burns creates absurdly convoluted mechanisms whose purpose is to produce a simple moving image on a screen, either by live video fed to a monitor, or as a shadow theater-like diorama. Fascinating and darkly humorous, Burns’ works directly explore the gap between how images are constructed and how they are consumed.
