Bernhard Martin: La Misura dello Spirito
Bernhard Martin (1966, Hannover, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. He has exhibited his work in galleries and museums around the world, including solo exhibitions at the Thaddaeus Ropac and Thomas Schulte galleries, as well as at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Arario Museum in Seoul. For all these reasons, VETA by Fer Francés is pleased to present La Misura dello Spirito, the first solo exhibition in Madrid of this internationally acclaimed artist.
Martin's works pose a pictorial dynamic with the viewer that ends in his or her gaze. Martin offers paintings, where both classical and contemporary influences subconsciously overflow on the canvas. And this is because Martin has been nourished by art all his life, from very different perspectives, and all of them have built him up: by his assiduous visits to the Gallery of the Old Masters at Wilhelmshöhe Palace, famous for its Rembrandt collection; by his early connection to contemporary art (he attended the Documenta in Kassel at the age of 7); by his fascination for the tales by the Grimm Brothers, result of their walks with their mother Dorothea, through forests that are also Martin's own.
Everything is held together in his works by the introduction of a "twist". The painting is organized around that, which is unexpected even for the artist himself. This could be called a pictorial surprise that involves the viewer and his or her sensibility, inviting him or her to introduce his or her own version of the scene he or she is looking at. In this way, in the canvas, influences of Hieronymus Bosch, known as Bosch, of Disney's imaginary or the aesthetics of Quentin Tarantino's films can be appreciated. This invitation, if acceded to, is the great question applicable to everything. There is Spirit, its measure matters less than its pursuit.
Martin has successfully explored several painting techniques throughout his career and, today, it could be said that he has mastered them all. In his own words, "at last, after more than thirty years of painting, I have managed to acquire the means I consider important to be able to handle images". With echoes also to the work of artists such as Otto Dix or George Grosz, Martin applies the paint with such delicacy that the paintings seem to be from another world. The brush disappears. His color palette is guided as much by iridescent silk, which we associate with classical clothing, as by the aesthetics of the Internet.
The gatherings we witness in the paintings of the exhibition are located in the misty twilight of an interior space, which is manifestly permeable to laws other than those that govern mundane reality. They are liminal cabarets where the evening is sustained by a conversation whose theme we cannot guess, but whose intensity we can: ecstatic. The technical meticulousness invites us to appreciate the beauty of the details, as well as the material consequences of the scene, such as the splashes or the smoke, suggesting, within that same beauty, also transience.
