At Ventana244, Ana Busto and Andrew Huston come together in a visual dialogue to generate a conversation about the use of found objects in their art practices. Burnt and Burnished presents pieces of the cityscape to­gether with pieces of nature; gilded found woodblock, cast iron, burnt wood and slip fired clay forms sit next to, across from and on top of each other. Burnt and Burnished also recalls, and in some ways traces, several collab­orative projects Ventana presented over the past year-and-a-half when artists, artist/curators and multi-media artists have interacted with each other, reacted to the environment of the space and re-situated art objects.

Tornadoes, hurricanes, and high temperatures are some of the punches of the violent relation that we have developed with our landscape. Busto's installation at Ventana uses materials from 'the burning forest phenom­enon'; trees reduced to charcoal, fired and baked ... clay remnants with an added a sound element (a radio dial turns and tunes to the sounds of farm animals).

Katz's Delicatessen was renovating its kitchen and tossing out its old, well used butcher blocks. In the studio Huston, treated them with formal gilding method; sanded, sealed, gesso, clay layers and then metal leaf lightly burnished. Past labor is writ all over them; the roto-reflection, flip symmetry of indentations etched from years of chopping, cutting, slicing and all forms of kitchen labor. These indentations have the shape a body might leave in the sand.

Burnt and Burnished joins Huston and Busto in a exchange of opposites.