Paint It, Black

Paint It, Black, a solo project by David Allen Burns, brings together two forms of carbon — charcoal made from fire-damaged organic material gathered in the San Bernardino National Forest and petroleum-based products commonly used in construction — to explore crisis, extraction, belief and transformation. Moving between the living forest and ancient petroleum, the handmade gesture and the industrial process, Paint It, Black examines environmental devastation, cultural inheritance, power and the mythology of progress to further examine Modernism and the twentieth-century American Dream that prosperity could be achieved through the continual extraction of natural resources. In so doing, the exhibition questions inherited ideas of progress and considers the environmental consequences concealed within familiar narratives of growth, abundance and development. 

Paint It, Black is the second exhibition in the series The Neganthropocene: Empire/Money, Science/Politics, Art/Intervention, a three-part research project by Juli Carson and collaborators under the umbrella of University of California Climate Actions Arts Network (UC CAAN) — a system-wide initiative uniting researchers, scholars, students and community partners to confront the climate crisis through the transformative power of the arts. UC CAAN is made possible with generous support from the University of California, Office of the President’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) grant program.