Eddie Martinez: Cowboy Town
Timothy Taylor is very pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Eddie Martinez, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery.
Deeply indebted to the histories of painting, yet realised in an immediately contemporary manner, Martinez’s canvases – formed from oil paint, enamel, spray paint, screen printing and studio detritus – are loaded with coloured, quasi-abstract masses in varying densities juxtaposed against shifting lines. The resulting dynamic imagery moves and merges from figuration to abstraction and back again.
Cowboy Town sees Martinez depart from recent bodies of work, as paintings are once again primarily figurative. Although not reminiscent of his early figurative works, they are a next step from the more recent abstract canvases. Each painting in this new body of work not only steps back into figuration, but also into an almost subconscious narrative, playing out in an open way. Gestures are strong but also impulsive. The paintings are full of energy and movement – images linger just out of reach, eluding fixed identity. One of Martinez’s remarkable traits is his ability to intuit the general mood of the world around him and translate the sentiment very clearly to his painting.
“As the maker I try to keep myself outside the narrative as much as I can or, at the least, I try not to walk people through it.”1
In Cowboy Town the paintings are raw, pared back, exposed. Backgrounds are solid, with imagery almost hovering on top. The paint is thinner, there’s an obvious reduction in ‘stuff’. And while the palette is typical Martinez – strong blues, yellows, reds – the underlying tone is sinister. The paintings are bright but nonetheless dark. For example, in the title painting, Cowboy Town, a face emerges through colour and gesture with a distinct expression of foreboding and dread.
“What I relate to most in my own work and process is the speed and raw unfiltered mark making.”2
The title, Cowboy Town, bears numerous references. As with Island I, his last exhibition here, there’s an association with music, and specifically Rastafari culture. Music is always key to Martinez’s process. Mood and sentiment is processed through music, before entering the canvas. In this case, the Black Uhuru song can be understood as a theme for the entire project.
Martinez has exhibited internationally, including Kunstmuseum Bonn; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Garage Centre For Contemporary Culture, Moscow; Museo de la Cuidad de México, Mexico City; and Deste Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens.
In September 2017, Martinez will hold his first solo museum exhibition in the USA, at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. He will also hold a significant solo exhibition of works on paper at the Drawing Center, New York, in October 2017.
Eddie Martinez was born in 1977. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
1 Eddie Martinez interviewed by Alison Gingeras in Salmon Eye, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, 2016.
2 op cit.
