Co.Lab Gallery presents
MARTIN KING
DIGITAL MEMENTOS
MARCH 20-29, 2026
Digital Mementos brings together a body of mixed media & collage works that mine the visual language of the internet; memes, screenshots, and fleeting digital images are reframed and given more attention than their subject matter can handle. Drawing from moments that feel entirely ordinary online, Martin King translates these fragments into a physicality that amplifies their inherent absurdity. With a wry and often disarming sense of humour, King isolates and re-presents images that might otherwise pass unnoticed in the endless scroll. Removed from their light digital context and rendered through traditional visual art, these “normal” moments take on a heightened, almost ridiculous quality. What was once casual or disposable becomes strangely fixed, inviting closer scrutiny.
In doing so, King’s work opens up a critical space around celebrity, spectacle, and consumer culture. They work like a sorority flash- the banal is elevated and asks why the excessive is normalized. His work does not attempt to resolve these tensions, but instead leans into them.
Enjoy how the line between irony and sincerity collapses. His humour exposes the contradictions embedded within contemporary image culture so naturally. Digital Mementos ultimately functions as both a reflection and a subtle critique of the visual economy we participate in daily. The ridiculous often hides in plain sight.
Martin King is an Ojibway multi-media artist from Thunder Bay, Ontario, with family roots in Gull Bay First Nation and Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation. He attended high school in Flemington, New Jersey, before returning to Thunder Bay in 2010 to study broadcasting and film at Confederation
College. After graduating from the Broadcasting and Film program, King became actively involved in the local arts and media community, working across directing, acting, and animation. His work has been exhibited at Definitely Superior Art Gallery and Thunder Bay Art Gallery. In 2022, he presented his first solo exhibition, Everyday Distractions, at Co.Lab Art Gallery.
