‘Indentations’, is a major new series of paintings by Martin Gustavsson. The core subject matter of the paintings reveal a physical rotation, through a fixed viewpoint, as if they were snapshots or the frames of a film reel. If a film is a large series of images shown in quick succession of one another, the paintings presented act equally as a short film of the sculpture, in all its dysfunction and disjointedness.
The majority of the paintings in the exhibition are inspired by a neoclassical sculpture in Gothenburg Museum of Art. Viewed from different angles, the sculpture has been captured in a rotation of perspectives. Presented and represented is an idealised body, a male nude and a still life. The artist’s use of bold colours and graphics lends heavily from the tools and techniques of visual communication. Gustavsson re-uses existing imagery, copying and creating likeness in difference. In a number of the paintings, representation has been altered by the addition of a physical object. This interference creates a sense of realness, enhancing and transferring the rotation and creating tension. This addition of an object breaks the conventional perception of the framing, allowing the painting to have physicality, a weight, an accentuated sense of presence. Art history is treated as a wealth of potential readymades, waiting to be recast and re-inscribed over time. With the painterly volume and flatness in the paintings, through the flatness comes indentation. Different works and times collides, one indentation in one painting starts a ripple effect, a subtle shift, across the neighboring works. Pressing the surface of one, it creates a representation of the footprint, or a change in the time line.
Martin Gustavsson (b. 1964, Sweden) lives and works in London, UK.
19 April – 1st June 2013
Maria Stenfors
Unit 10, 21 Wren Street
London
WC1X 0HF
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