A black hole appears in a dream, and then another, and then everywhere, and speaks of an existence defined by not appearing, by being not as things appear, by not being a hole at all. This visitation is like a fairy-tale: a hole claims to have been born on Earth, at CERN in Geneva, and conceived by Celtic spirit Cernunnos as a joke and as Chthonic revenge on the descendants of ancestors who once venerated non-human rule of nature, fertility and wild things. The CERN-born singularity appears only to the one who can resist its attraction, who happens to be lonely and in need of a cosmic friend. The black hole makes it clear, there is a need for spooky action at a distance and radical pair dynamics (involving magnetism and chemical reactions).
David Burrows presents paintings, drawings, film and assemblages that draw on the abstractions of singularities and the perspectives of Black Hole Ontology – being not as things appear – as communicated by the offspring of Cernunnos: a politics of collapse and rejuvenation without Event Horizons, initiating spooky affects at a distance to fire the ergosphere (the region around the singularity from which energy can escape). Through fictional means, the exhibition engages with contemporary politics and cultures and their aesthetics of appearance, proposing a cosmopolitics modelled on the mysterious nature of black holes.
ABOUT DAVID BURROWS
David Burrows is an artist and writer interested in notions and concepts of the new in sacred, mass and avant-garde cultures. His current practice addresses the production of fiction as a transformative process as well as notions of impermanence and immanence, extending earlier concerns that addressed violence, destruction, crisis and disorientation as structural elements in popular & mass culture, and avant-garde & utopian culture.
As well as establishing a solo art practice, Burrows has often worked with other artists, including collaborations with the artists’ group BANK, DJ Simpson and the Diagram Research Group, which undertook a residency at Flat Time House London in 2020 – the group will publish the book Drawing Analogies, with Bloomsbury Press in Spring 2025 which presents research from the residency. Since 2005, Burrows has been collaborating with Simon O'Sullivan, Vanessa Page, Alex Marzeta and others to produce the performance-fiction Plastique Fantastique, through the production of events, films, writing, installations and artefacts.
Working as solo artist and collaboratively, Burrows has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad including the South London Gallery, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Arts Space, Sidney and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and presented work in the British Council survey exhibition Macro/ Micro: British Art 1996 - 2002, Kunsthalle Mucsarnok, Budapest. More recently, Burrows collaborated on exhibits for Shonky, a Hayward Touring Show (2017-18), Mars Year Zero at Southwark Park Gallery London (2019), Profanations, Fidelidade Arte, Lisbon and Culturgest, Porto (2023) and The Inverted Tower La Casa Encendida Madrid (2024). He was selected for Becks Futures at the ICA, London in 2001 and received a Paul Hamlyn Visual Artists Award in 2003. Published writing includes Fictioning: The Myth Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy with Simon O’Sullivan (Published by Edinburgh University Press in 2019). Burrows studied at Goldsmiths College, London and is a Professor of Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.