The Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents a solo exhibition of Jason Martin, Vigil. In Themes & Variations: From the Mark to Zero
March 21 - May 17 2009 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection hosts Themes & Variations. From the Mark to Zero, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero. This exhibition draws upon the museum’s permanent collections from the early 20th century to the post World War II period and charts the progress of the pictorial mark chronologically and thematically: from typography to collage, from letters to numbers, to the iteration of gesture, of signs, eventually sublimating into monochrome, beyond which the only possible condition is the void. As a ‘variation’ of this theme, the exhibition includes Vigil a one-man show of paintings, by British artist Jason Martin, who has been invited to interpret grade zero with a series of 13 works specifically created for this exhibition.
Jason Martin is among the most interesting painters of the generation of Young British Artists. He has been invited to present a sequence of monochromes, refined in texture and luminous in tone, poised between painting and sculpture. These are executed with manifest, parallel brushstrokes in oil, acrylic or a mixture of mediums, on a variety of supports—aluminium, stainless steel, and plexiglas-generating a vibrant space in which an infinity of pictorial possibilities co-exist. Martin’s rotating and textural technique, condensing in lines and circles, give a translucent and dynamic optical effect to his wavy, reflective monochromes in natural colors. His work references American Abstract Expressionism and Minimal Art, through a combination of gestural expressionism and conceptual rigor, with an aspect of physicality owing to the movement of the body in the act of painting which endows the pictorial surface with fresh life and intense energy.
In the words of Jason Martin: “This exhibition is partly a response to the exceptional works found in the Peggy Collection aiming to provoke a dialogue or conversation between my paintings and those examples of early modernism […] Recognising that fundamentally my works consider colour structurally and not decoratively, matter becomes visceral, erotic and experiential […] Transparency is scaled and measured ultimately consumed by a saturation of spinel black, the only transparent black pigment. Chiaroscuro found in contemporary practice.”
In 1997, as a very young man, Martin took part in the famous group show of “hot” Young British Artists Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection—at the Royal Academy, London. In 1999 he was invited to exhibit at the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. In 2001 he participated in the exhibition Figure astratte in Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome and the next year in L’ultima cena in the Castel dell’Ovo in Naples. In 2004 he exhibited Monocromos. De Malevich al presente, in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
The exhibition Vigil is organized in the collaboration with la Galleria Mimmo Scognamiglio, Milan-Naples. Grateful thanks to Distilleria Nardini and Gruppo La-Vis for the generous donation of cocktails.