Past Solo Exhibition
Jason Martin: Meta physical 23.03.2019 — 04.05.2019
Information
Event has ended
23 March - 4 May 2019
About The Exhibition
STPI is pleased to present Jason Martin : Meta physical , an exhibition chronicling modes in which the dialectic between matter and creative intuition is perceived and processed through the artist’s personal language of abstraction. Through a rigorous experimentation in print and paper, Martin’s practice of abstract painting is reinvigorated by the processual nature of printmaking and the introduction of new material qualities.
In particular, the possibilities of embossed relief and paper casting have brought to Martin’s paintings a distinctive vocabulary of expression through a sustained exploration of line and gesture. The artist’s marks take on sweeping, continuous linearities in his drypoint compositions, while works of aquatint record drip-like traces. In his series of paper pulp paintings, textured images further occupy the space between the pictoriality of painting and the spatiality of sculpture.
Positioning himself at one with a set of conditions and moments afforded by the residency, Martin tempers chance and intention to generate varying expressions of surface texture on which the bodily is inferred, and the unconscious made perceptible.
We had the privilege to host our Guest-of-Honour, H. E. Scott Wightman, British High Commissioner, on our exhibition opening. View our exhibition opening photographs here.
Public programmes:
[Past] Artist Talk: Jason Martin, with Greg Hilty and Mark Gisbourne
[Past] Reel Thursdays: The Silence of Mark Rothko
[Past] Workshop: Paper: Sculpt-N-Cast
[Past] Arty Afternoon: Experiments with Print and Pulp
[Past] Panel Talk: Abstraction as: Object, Process, Rhythm, Force
[Past] Reel Thursday: Pollock (2000)
For more information on our programmes, please click here.
About the artist
Jason Martin
Residency in 2016
Jason Martin (b. 1970, Jersey, Channel Islands, based in London, United Kingdom) is known for his raw engagement with painting. Viewing the medium as a realm that can be explored endlessly, Martin draws on the elements of colour, shape and texture to create highly tactile, pigmented compositions that merge the visual languages of abstraction and landscape painting. His paintings recall gestural and monochrome tendencies in Modernist practices, evoking a sense of movement and transformation.
Since the start of his career in the early 1990s, Martin’s process-based approach has combined diverse methods of manipulating paint across different material supports such as plexiglass and stainless steel. Works like Lover (1997) and Vertigo (2006) feature layers of oil and acrylic being dragged across the surface with a comb-like tool the artist invented himself, creating linear patterns that appear to undulate. In 2012, he began incorporating his painterly language to sculptural reliefs and freestanding forms, creating cast metal works like Zocalo (2013) and Anathema (2013) where solid materials such as bronze and nickel take on elaborate contortions with a fluid appearance.
Martin obtained his BFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 1993, rising to prominence as part of the Young British Artists during that time. His work is held in major collections including Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; Denver Art Museum; Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Institut Valencià d'Art Modern; Jersey Museum, Channel Islands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Salzburg; Museum of Modern Art, La Spezia; Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg; Espoo Museum of Modern Art; and Sprengel Museum, Hannover.
Notable solo exhibitions include Works 1997-2017 (2017), Schauwerk Sindelfingen; Traction (2016), Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst, Otterndorf; Swear To God (2016), Pelaires Centre Cultural Contemporani, Palma de Mallorca; Nomad (2008), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; and Nomad (2008), Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.The artist has also participated in numerous international festivals including Trace (1999) 1st Liverpool Biennial; and Premio del Golfo (2000), European Biennial of the Visual Arts, La Spezia.
Martin had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2016, resulting in the exhibition Meta physical (2019).
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