Paysages domestiques
October 9 - November 6, 1999
From October 9 to November 6, Jean-Marie Martin returns to the Galerie Trois Points to present his latest production.
In DOMESTIC LANDSCAPES, Martin continues his artistic approach of the last years by favoring again the use of potentially dangerous products. The raw material of the paintings, these products are borrowed from the household arsenal of every individual who is falsely aware of environmental problems. If asbestos paste and lead sheet are now replaced by drano and oven cleaners, the critical dimension is also present. Witness and actor in this domestic universe, the artist denounces the hypocrisy of a government condemning the toxicity of many products while leaving them on the market. It is not without irony that Martin also points to the collective paranoia that is driving many citizens, especially our American neighbors, to arm themselves against a hostile environment while they have their own detonator …
Martin not only questions the current ecological problem but questions the status of contemporary painting. To quote Mona Hakim, author of the Landscapes Out-of-Frame catalog, 1977-1999, Jean-Marie Martin’s poisonous paintings transpose the unhealthy fear provoked by dangerous products into a kind of uneasiness or even insidious terror in the face of pictorial abstraction. . The artist leads us to reflect on the phenomenon attraction / repulsion attached to the abstract and minimalist art which, in this case, is untouchable.