War Museum (2012)
MIXED TECHNIQUE
In War Museum, Kris Martin rescales space by juxtaposing a small oil painting - an anonymous portrait of an equally anonymous soldier - with a tiny silver cross. These objects refer to the ideological drives behind every war. The violence of war is symbolized in the foreground by pieces of an exploded bomb, lifelike fragments that take on pop-art-like dimensions in the museum room. In this sense, War Museum joins other works in which Martin magnifies symbols of violence until they become useless and addresses the absurdity of displays of power and war violence.