Chris Martin
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Grabbeplatz 4
D-40213 Düsseldorf
T +49 211 89 96 243
F +49 211 89 29 168
mail [at] kunsthalle-duesseldorf.de
Tue–Sun, public holidays 11–18h
Kunsthalle is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition outside the United States by Chris Martin (b. 1954 in Washington D.C.), who is as yet relatively unknown in Germany. Since the mid-nineties, Martin’s work has frequently referenced to artist colleagues from the fields of painting and music—an homage not only pop stars, but also those who existed and exist outside the mainstream; in some cases, viz. Michael Jackson, James Brown or the investigator of the Red Ribbon project, Frank Moore, prompted by their deaths. Dedications of this sort are indicative of the societal foundation of Martin’s large-format compositions, as well as being gestures of devotion and solidarity. At the same time, they break away from those purity requirements of monochrome or color field painting. The names are rudely placed into the image’s overall space, adjacent to glued coins, vinyl LPs, banana skins, and newspaper articles. For more than thirty years now and despite the crude, thoroughly secular appearance of the images’ surfaces, Martin’s work has been tapping into various different traditions of spiritual abstraction, for which New York, where Martin has been living since 1975, has been the proverbial melting pot.The exhibition, curated by Elodie Evers and Gregor Jansen, focuses in particular upon the early and middle period of Martin’s oeuvre. The “Black Paintings,” for example, which create the illusion of three-dimensional space with a few lines, belong to the older works. Martin’s engagement with painters, such as Malevich und Mondrian, is clearly visible here. In parallel to these large-format paintings Martin also worked on a number of small, colourful canvases. In these paintings, Martin reverts to Christian mysticism and anthroposophist symbolism, as well as to the “spiritual landscapes” of North American Romanticism, quite unknown in Europe. In particular, the painting “Staring into the Sun,” created especially for Düsseldorf and stretching out from the wall to the floor, reveals Martin’s sheer enthusiasm for size and dimensions relative to the human frame, captivating us with its seeming plasticity. Martin sees his paintings as objects with a life of their own, and not the sanctified preserve of the ‘white cube.’ On the contrary, his paintings often hang on the walls of buildings or in trees. This exhibition will also extend beyond the gallery into the outside and will show how the legacy of Pop Art, the fusion of high and low, and the trivialisation of the image can be brought to bear within, of all places, that bastion of modern abstraction—the aesthetics of the sublime.
The first comprehensive exhibition catalogue, featuring numerous colour illustrations, essays by Gregor Jansen, Alexander Koch, Bob Nickas, Lars Bang Larsen, and a conversation with Chris Martin and Elodie Evers, will be published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.
In parallel Kunsthalle seitenlichsaal shows
MATT CONNORS
GAS…TELEPHONE…ONE HUNDRES THOUSAND RUBLES
22 October 2011 until 20 November 2011
Curated by Elodie Evers
Image above:
Courtesy Chris Martin, KOW BERLIN, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, Foto: Donna Alberico
