Martin Gustavsson: Indentations

Maria Stenfors is pleased to announce ‘Indentations’, a major new series of paintings by Martin Gustavsson. The core subject matter of the paintings reveal a physical rotation, through a fixed viewpoint, as if they were snapshots or the frames of a film reel. If a film is a large series of images shown in quick succession of one another, the paintings presented act equally as a short film of the sculpture, in all its dysfunction and disjointedness.

The majority of the paintings in the exhibition are inspired by a neoclassical sculpture in Gothenburg Museum of Art. Viewed from different angles, the sculpture has been captured in a rotation of perspectives. Presented and represented is an idealised body, a male nude and a still life. The artist’s use of bold colours and graphics lends heavily from the tools and techniques of visual communication. Gustavsson re-uses existing imagery, copying and creating likeness in difference. In a number of the paintings, representation has been altered by the addition of a physical object. This interference creates a sense of realness, enhancing and transferring the rotation and creating tension.

This addition of an object breaks the conventional perception of the framing, allowing the painting to have physicality, a weight, an accentuated sense of presence. Art history is treated as a wealth of potential readymades, waiting to be recast and re-inscribed over time. With the painterly volume and flatness in the paintings, through the flatness comes indentation. Different works and times collides, one indentation in one painting starts a ripple effect, a subtle shift, across the neighboring works. Pressing the surface of one, it creates a representation of the footprint, or a change in the time line.

Martin Gustavsson (b. 1964, Sweden) lives and works in London, UK. Gustavsson was educated both at The Royal University Collage of Fine Art in Stockholm, Sweden and at Middlesex University, UK. His works have been exhibited in Scandinavia as well as in the UK, Japan, USA and the Middle East. He lectures at Umeå University, Sweden and held the IASPIS residencies in New York (1999-2000) and Stockholm (2007) Recent exhibitions include Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Galerie Crone, Berlin; and Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. ‘Indentations’ is the artist’s second solo exhibition at Maria Stenfors.