Jason Martin: REDUX
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki
March 22 – April 21, 2024
Jason Martin is a painter whose practice is steeped in materiality and self-reflexive questioning of painting as an art form. His work gives a visible form to the processes by which both painting and sculpture come into being. This visualization of the process is epitomized by his monochromatic, three-dimensional pigment pieces, which hover somewhere between painting and sculpture. These sculptural paintings protrude beguilingly from the wall, bursting out of the two-dimensional world of painting and into the surrounding space. Jason Martin’s works come alive through a combination of materiality, movement and a masterfully conjured illusion of depth. His pigment pieces are accompanied by oil paintings executed in intense, sweeping brushstrokes that endow the oil paint with a vivid quality that draws us in and makes us part of the painting’s reality. The experience he evokes is not a static one, but an interactive and immersive encounter. His paintings evoke moments of calm meditativeness clashing with haptic chaos and unpredictability.
Jason Martin’s new exhibition at brings together older and new paintings that demonstrate the wide spectrum of materials used by the artist. Jason Martin has a readily recognizable visual style that is distinguished by his distinctive treatment of color, form and structure, all woven together in perfect balance without any single element dominating the others. Jason Martin’s palette is a highly unusual combination of saturated pure pigments and a delicately nuanced mix of inflected and blended shades. He sculpts form so compellingly that it not only possesses a powerful optical presence but also a physical one. His vocabulary of form is inseparable from the dynamic movement and texture created by his colors. All these elements come together in a fusion of visual components that is experienced holistically.
JASON MARTIN (b.1970) studied at the Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmith College in London. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe at venues including the Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst and the Schauwerk Sindelfingen Museum in Germany, the Peggy Guggenheim collections in Venice and the Centro de Arte Contemporàneo de Malaga, and in the fall of 2024, he will have a solo exhibition at the He Art Museum (HEM) in Guangdong, China. His work is represented in numerous private and public collections worldwide, including those of the Denver Art Museum, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Hirshhorn Museum. Jason Martin lives and works in London and Lisbon.
Curated by Annalisa Lombardo.
GALERIE FORSBLOM
Yrjönkatu 22 - 00120 Helsinki
