ART-PRESENTATION: Cameron Martin-Reticulations

Cameron Martin is best known for his large-scaled, photographically-based landscape paintings. For years his painting practice centered on investigating various modes of representation and seriality in relationship to images of nature. In 2014, he began working against this approach returning to earlier elements that he felt were missing in his recent studio practice.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Van Doren Waxter Gallery Archive

Cameron Martin in his solo exhibition “Reticulations” at Van Doren Waxter Gallery in New York, debuts a new body of small-scale, optical drawings. The drawings were made over a period of three years using permanent marker on paper, representing a radical departure from the artist’s 15-year work. 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.

Info: Van Doren Waxter Gallery, 23 East 73rd Street, New York, Duration: 28/6-25/8/17, Days & Hours:  Mon-Fri 10:00-17:00, www.vandorenwaxter.com