JAVIER MARTIN: LIGHTS APPROPRIATION

JAVIER MARTIN: LIGHTS APPROPRIATION

BLINDNESS | /ˈblīndnəs/ – Defined as the absence of sight; lack of perception, awareness, or judgment; ignorance.
The exhibition JAVIER MARTIN: LIGHTS APPROPRIATION presents 11 works with a thought-provoking boldness that represents the most recent continuation of Javier Martin’s Blindness collection.

Behind the glow of spectacular neon stripes, tempting models are depicted. They have been taken out of their perfectly staged world of advertising. Their seductive glances hide behind vibrant lights, and direct eye contact with the viewers is impossible. The eyes understood as the mirror of human emotions is intentionally covered up, causing ambivalent feelings and challenging questions. This exhibition encourages self-reflection.
Martin uses sophisticated visual elements to stimulate the viewer’s curiosity, to let them question what may be hidden behind the lights and what blinds us.
Through excellent artistic skills, Martin combines painting and collage in order to detect the transformation of the natural daylight and places it in a powerful battle with artificial light. He takes us on a journey from poetic sunsets to sunrises, dark night skies, and graceful twilights and creates new allegories of natural light.
These works allow us autocritical questions: How strong is the Blindness that comes from favoring unimportant things? Is a clear sight hindered by something, or are we intentionally covering our eyes?

Javier Martin was born in Spain in 1985. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose paintings explore the meticulous observation of society, creating works that carry a profound meaning and political message.

Mass media, consumption, and the systems created by society occupy space with vapid distractions, dimming the pure light burning inside each of us, which fuels our passions and lives. The neon in the Blindness Light Collection references the bright, artificial lights of a consumer culture built to distract from what is truly meaningful. The ultimate goal is not the light but discovering what is behind the light, what lives in each of us.
In today’s society, perception is everything. Martin’s work gives form to the inarticulate feelings of self-worth. Known for its thought-provoking boldness, he creates art that rattles nerves, stirs the senses, and invites the viewer to not only question societal views of worth but their perspectives as well.

JAVIER MARTIN is a multidisciplinary artist who bases his creative exploration on the careful observation of his surroundings, detecting semiotic relationships that might otherwise pass by unnoticed to an unperceptive viewer. With this approach, the artist constructs situations that invite reflection on impending matters in today’s world.

Raised in Spain, Martin began painting in oil colors at the tender age of seven and had his first exhibition at the age of eight; however, he never allowed himself to be influenced by formal artistic training. Instead, he relied on his experiences, which allowed him to explore the possibilities of various materials and tools that he incorporates in his work today. Traveling, living, and working in countries – from Europe, South Korea, Hong Kong to the United States – honed his observation skills, allowing him to learn from people and daily situations far removed from his background. During the Summer of 2012, Martin participated in his first exhibition in Asia M50 Art District. By 2014 he officially was represented by Matthew Liu Fine Art Gallery in Shanghai.

In addition to his international exhibitions worldwide, he shares his knowledge and personal experience regarding the realm of art culture through speaking engagements. In 2015 he conversed with a group of students during a Conference at Alboran College in Marbella, Spain, discussing art’s impact on his life. 2017 opened with him presenting his performance piece ‘Lies and Light’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, followed by a discussion about the importance of breaking down the lights that veer us away from the path of truth. Most recently, he was a panelist in New Ways of Seeing, presented by the New World Forum at Liang Yi Museum, Hong Kong.

Martin has equally experimented in painting, collage, sculpture, performance art, and video art. Through his work, he proposes relationships among forms, surfaces, textures, and scenarios in which objects used on a daily basis related to each other in unexpected ways. This talented artist consistently demonstrates his capacity to masterfully manipulate and relate materials and situations to construct sharp visual metaphors. In the Fall of 2015, Martin presented “War, Consumption, and Other Human Hobbies,” a solo exhibition at Valli Art Gallery in Miami. Showing several pieces from his Blindness Collection as well a collection of works whose messages addressed themes of consumption and strategies of power within the global economy.

For over a decade, Martin has been developing one of his most iconic collections, Blindness. The eyes, classically associated with the reflection of human emotions, are always concealed, whether behind a vibrant stroke of paint or glowing neon light. With painting and collage, he reproduces images of seemingly perfect models, symbols of a standard of beauty and lifestyle that most people long to enjoy. Inspired by the juxtaposition between the grit of city surroundings and the glossy ads that line them, Martin deconstructs this perceived perfection to create a contrast between technology, collage, and painting.

In the Spring of 2016, Martin presented his first performance piece, ‘Lies and Light,’ at his solo show during Art Basel Hong Kong week.
This performance also represents the latest evolution of the art – its Blindness concept. In this case, the artist manifests himself as the protagonist, literally shattering society’s barriers to convey the struggle against conformity, the fight for truth and freedom. This raw and rebellious performance finds Martin completely vulnerable in an intense spiritual journey to overcome his past to progress.

In 2018, Martin continued to build on the questions raised by his performance art with installations that challenge viewers to examine their own Blindness. Following his public Blindness mural for the 71st Festival de Cannes and his solo exhibition “Blindness the Appropriation of Beauty” (curated by Robert C. Morgan), Martin created several interactive installations in which the Blindness concept is more visceral and tangible than ever before. In ‘A Room Without Walls,’ Martin riffs on his ‘Alma’ series with an immersive, completely mirrored room in which viewers see themselves infinitely repeated in the face of a figure blinded by neon light. For ‘The Dark Box,’ exhibited at Valli Art Gallery in Miami and New York, Martin continues to challenge gallery visitors to directly interact with the Blindness concept. Developed in a world dominated by social media, Martin uses ‘The Dark Box’ to invite viewers to become a part of his art; simultaneously, the piece creates a situation in which participants can question their own Blindness to new means of consumption.

Martin’s most recent works show him revisiting the concepts behind his earliest works in the Blindness collection. In these large-scale and expressive collages, Martin layers paint, prints, paper ephemera, and neon in order to present the Blindness concept with new complexity. Whereas he forces participants to examine their own Blindness in his installations, these mature works show Martin mining his own oeuvre to reexamine Blindness more than a decade later. These reflective pieces have been exhibited simultaneously, at Plan B at David Zwirner and in a solo exhibition titled “BLINDNESS” at Valli Art Gallery New York in March 2019.

Javier Martin presented his first solo museum exhibition at the Seoul Museum in Spring 2019 and his first solo exhibition in Japan at Maki Gallery in the fall of 2019,
followed by his solo show at The Andong Arts and Culture Center, Korea (2019); Tri- Bowl Art Space, Korea (2020); The Koo House Museum, Korea (2020) and the group exhibition “Iconic – 아이코닉” at The Seoul Museum, South Korea (2021).

PULPO GALLERY is pleased to start the New Year with the solo exhibition JAVIER MARTIN: LIGHTS APPROPRIATION,
on view from January 15 through February 26, 2022.

Read the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #66