British artist Jason Martin, known for his thick, monochromatic paintings which tiptoe often into the realm of sculpture, is currently showing at London’s Lisson Gallery.
The eponymous exhibition brings together new oil paintings and silver cast works from the last year and marks a slight shift in focus for the artist. In the paintings on show Martin works with oil paint which is rendered almost sculptural in its thick application and deep mark making, with grooved brush strokes and gashes, and a wet appearance, giving the works both an immediacy and a sense of serious consideration.
The paintings can also be seen as an exploration of colour, with single whites, greys and blacks dominating entire canvases, and each piece named after an individual tone — Burnt Sienna, Payne’s Grey, Ivory Black and so on. The links with Minimalism are also present, these pieces exploring the qualities of this enduring medium as and for themselves. This concept is consistent between the paintings and silver cast works, in the latter, polished metal is used to similar effect, with modeller’s paste hand sculpted in forms akin to those seen throughout the paintings, and cast in silver. If anything, the tension between spontaneous movement and solid form is present even more so in these cast works, where potentially throwaway gestures become frozen in space and time.
Jason Martin runs until 7 January 2017 at London’s Lisson Gallery. Videographer: Laura Bushell. Sponsored Content.
