Cameron Martin. Reticulations

About

Reticulations is the first solo show of Martin’s work in New York in six years. Accompanying the show is a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Dan Nadel.

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, on view from June 30–September 9, 2017. Produced in conjunction with Abstracts is a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson.