Two Planes was exhibited in the group show "Co-isolated", featuring new work by Richard Goodwin, Michael Snape, and David Burns
South Sydney Corporate Park, Sydney, NSW Australia
16-19 April 2010

"Aesthetic k-hole", Adrian Lahoud — excerpt from the catalogue text

David Burns is a junkie for repetition; his work is an aesthetic k-hole.

Ketamine is an anaesthetic; pharmaceutically speaking it belongs to the class of drugs known as dissociatives which operate by blocking signals to the brain. According to frequent users, the slight overdose called a ‘k-hole’ is the closest one can get to death without actually dying, its effects include an inability to think, extreme tunnelling of vision and an overwhelming sense of cold dread. If ecstasy is a ‘tactile temptress’ full of baroque intricacy, ketamine is pure Miesien box.
Towering.
Lights on.
No one inside.

David Burns is a junkie for repetition; his work is an anaesthetic for the ecstasy generation, a generation hooked on sensational intensity.

There is something terrifyingly destructive about insistent repetition. It lays waste to our sense making apparatus, annihilates coordinates of reference and etherizes the self to the point of oblivion. In this infinitesimal calculus of sensation, cold mechanical repetition reveals itself as nothing less than the affective DNA of modernity itself.
The thin white lines.
The cold corridors.
The rectilinear banks of fluorescent light.
No one inside.

It’s the closest you can get to death.