Jason Martin — Gestural Ubiquity — Thaddaeus Ropac Marais Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 22 → March 21, 2014

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac presents a solo exhibition with new pigment paintings by Jason Martin. Firmly anchored in the modernist practices of the gestural and monochrome, Jason Martin has been consistently exploring and refining his painting over the years. The meticulously choreographed movement of the brush and controlled application of paint have always conferred his work an extraordinary sculptural quality.

Jason Martin, El Tiempo, 2014 Mixed media on aluminium (Alizarin violet) — 79.53 × 71.65 in Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg

In an endeavour to push the boundaries towards sculpture even further, Jason Martin merges sculptural and gestural techniques in his recent works. What might look like a composition of generous, pastose swirls and rakes of creamy paint is in fact a minutely built sculpted texture. Pure pigments are projected onto these rugged landscapes accentuating mounts, streams, crevasses and plains. In the process, the organic intermingles with the inorganic, smooth surfaces acquire a more mineral texture and in some cases give you the illusion of seeing a fine deposit of frost on the paintings. The emergence of forms and reliefs sometimes evoke a mysterious mountainous landscape or a storm, expressing the suggestive power of abstract painting to convene nonetheless an image in the viewer’s mind.

Jason Martin, Celestina, 2014 Mixed media on aluminium (Prussian blue) — Tondo — 176 cm diam Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg

These new pigment paintings stand in stark contrast to Jason Martin’s oil paintings. His compositions in oil create an illusion of depth and the lines, fine as hair on a translucent background, are constantly interacting with the light, reverberating it as through a soft filter. His pigment paintings instead seem to absorb all the light in their texture to then render an intense and mute glow, sublimating the physical experience of the material.