PEEKABOO SHAM
WORKS BY JORDAN MARTINS
FEBRUARY 9 - APRIL 5, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION - FEBRUARY 9, 6-8 PM
Phenotype 177
STATEMENT
My core research at the moment involves recursive looping between photographic and painting processes: painted objects that become photographed, photographic fragments printed/painted/torn, ad hoc collages of these fragments arranged on flatbed scanners, and inkjet printed canvases of these scans functioning as starting points for oil paintings. This promiscuity between analog/digital, photographic/painted, and ordered/unhinged in my own practice is also what excites me about the broader state of painting in our current moment.
I see the logic of collage as the overarching principle that runs through my visual practice. Much of my work has in fact used the literal building blocks of collage--glued fragments of paper--but I see a deeper resonance in the term “collage” as a way to point to processes of translation and disruption that images go through: the ruptures that occur when something is removed from its context; the reactions that arise when it is grafted onto another system; how the “edges” of these interactions engender different results if they are smoothly cut or jaggedly torn, seamlessly integrated or bluntly repelling each other.
I’m curious about the perceptual dynamics that affect how a viewer reads the outputs of these processes, and this has brought about an interest in Gestalt psychology, theories of camouflage, issues of signal-versus-noise, fugue structures, signaling theory, and hallucination. I see a thread of continuity between the aesthetics of collage and the functioning of camouflage in that they both seek to conflate a figure/ground experience on a basic visual level that points to a viewer’s perceptual scaffolding.
ARTIST BIO
photo: Stephen Garrett
Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Goldfinch, The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Zeitgeist, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was recently featured in volume 155 of New American paintings. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá <> Close to There, a multidisciplinary project with international artists in Salvador, Brazil and Chicago funded by the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.