Empathy Lab, Colin Martin

The title ‘Empathy Lab’ comes from a dedicated area in Facebook’s EU headquarters in Dublin where employees can express empathy to various causes, through the use of technology. This body of work explores what the artist identifies as a prosthetic relationship between humans and technology and uses the genre conventions of representational painting to probe the digital age.

It makes reference to science-fiction genres and previously-imagined futures that have now come to pass or even been surpassed. In Colin Martin’s paintings he depicts objects and entities that have become obsolete or reappraised such as computer museums, analogue recording equipment and modular electronic instruments. Pre-internet sites of surveillance are investigated, such as the Berlin Stasi Museum, as are spaces associated with the geneses of a surveillance culture and its particular version of capitalism. 

Colin’s work explores the blurring of boundaries between public and private, real and virtual. He reinterprets research and development of big tech such as Amazon, Facebook and Tesla to evoke the powerful synthesis of technology, culture and politics in our contemporary world.

Published on occasion of Martin's exhibition in Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland.

Published by Highlanes Gallery
Edition of 300
Hardcover
65 pages
166 x 236 mm
ISBN 9780957294622