The Skin That Forms on the Surface

“The Skin That Forms on the Surface,” by Colleen Burner, is a digital reproduction of a collage, created specifically for the Artspace Project Wall and continues Burner’s exploration of narratives in visual art.

While studying at KCAI with associate professor of painting, Julie Farstad, Burner created a series of works for a course entitled “Finding the Narrative.” Parlaying that assignment, she has since developed a process that filters and organizes found materials into convincing yet bizarre images. Her image repository, a select collection of cut-outs from old National Geographic magazines and books about the American landscape, fashion her approach as bricolage, ultimately creating a whole new fictional context for them.  She embraces the qualities of punchline, joke and payoff by assembling impossible combinations of people, places and animals while directing a compelling storyline with multiple stand-ins. Here, we are invited to consider the functional action of the Great Hand pulling and removing “The Skin” thus revealing a subtle, surreal earthscape.