Cameron Martin “Reticulations”

Van Doren Waxter

[Image: Cameron Martin "Untitled" (2016) Permanent marker on paper, 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.]

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Van Doren Waxter presents Cameron Martin: Reticulations, an exhibition debuting contemporary artist Cameron Martin’s new body of small-scale, optical drawings. Reticulations is the first solo show of Martin’s work in New York in six years.

The drawings in Martin’s Reticulations were made over a period of three years using permanent marker on paper, representing a radical departure from the artist’s 15-year practice of large-format landscape-based painting. Deviating from the issues of representation foregrounded in his dark gray and black photo-based paintings of the mid to late 2000s and the illusory, nearly white-on-white work from his subsequent Bracket series, the lush, saturated colors and purely abstract nature of this newest body of work mark a definitive turn in Martin’s production. At the same time, while the visual content of Reticulations is entirely new, the series reflects an insistent focus on perception, exactitude, and inscrutability that has been present throughout the artist’s career.

As the exhibition’s title suggests, each work in Reticulations is composed of intersecting lines that conjure networks both material and virtual. Distributions of vibrant, gradient-like fields of color appear to be illuminated from within, evoking sonic textures, textile patterning and imagined information space. The procedures used to produce the drawings are both systematic and aleatory, creating periodic disruptions to the overall stability of the image, reminiscent of the technological glitch. The resulting compositions provide a platform for studious examination of the activity of visual perception and consumption.

Coinciding with Reticulations is a solo exhibition of Martin’s new body of paintings at the University Art Museum at SUNY Albany entitled Abstracts. Produced in conjunction with Abstracts is a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson.

Cameron Martin was born in Seattle, Washington in 1970 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He was educated at Brown University and the Whitney Independent Study Program. He is the recipient of a 2010 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a 2008 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, among other awards. Solo exhibitions include James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA (2017), Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska, Salzurg, Austria (2016), Bracket, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, NY (2011), Gallery Min Min in Tokyo (2008) and Currents 97: Cameron Martin, at the St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, MO (2006). His work has been presented in group exhibitions internationally, including Mythos Berg, RLB Kunstbrücke, Innsbruck, Austria (2011), roundabout, City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, which travelled to the Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel (2010), and the prestigious Whitney Biennial (2004). His work is in numerous museum collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Seattle Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.