Jason Martin born in 1970 in Jersey, Channel Islands, lives and works in London and Mexico. The British painter Jason Martin left Goldsmiths College in 1993 and immediately began to show his distinctive single gesture paintings with the Lisson Gallery London. His work became known through international touring shows such as British Reflexive Painters, and About Vision (MoMA Oxford), and as part of the now legendary Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy. He has been short listed for the Jerwood Prize and the Nat West Prize, and was prizewinner at the last John Moores Liverpool exhibition. Recent solo shows of his work have been held at the Robert Miller Gallery New York, Galleria Ferrari, Milan and at the L.A. Louver Gallery, Los Angeles.

First and foremost a painter of monochromatic, sculptural abstraction, Martin's drawing practice exists as an ongoing, stand alone research programme, through the exploration of strategic choreographed gestures. By limiting himself to the simple activity of meandering liquid inks with set brush sizes across a surface, Martin attempts to surf the duality of intention and serendipity, where at points a method breaks and surprises.

Through his particular choice of materials, every nuance of their intense construction is revealed. The resulting complex and detailed surface encourages a slow, analytical viewing experience, relating as much to organic growth formations as to the didactic of their making.

Martin's works stand somewhere between painting and sculpture. Using layers of oil or acrylic gel on hard reflective stainless steel, aluminium or Perspex, he fashions comb-like pieces of metal or board to move the paint across the surface in one movement, often repeating it again and again until the perfect balance of paint, translucence and striation is achieved. The results are modern, dramatic and sexy. Like Pollock or De Kooning, there is emphasis on the physical action of painting; the propulsion of the artist through his work is palpable. By working in monochrome, Martin is able to particularly deepen his focus on light, form and space.
In the eponymously named group of work. Day Paintings, inspired by the symbolic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, Martin presents a study of light as it changes throughout the day. Beginning with Atlas, he interprets the cool, ethereal beauty of first light following it, through a series of paintings, as it finally dissolves into "moonrise". Each painting begins as an entirely zinc white surface over which he subtly layers pigment to create a "floating transparent veil of colour". Each is an 'aerial landscape' of light at different times of the day.

Martin has described his paintings as 'journeys' whereby he physically moves across the surface as he paints. Some works in this exhibition will be a departure from his earlier action paintings as he begins to rationalise the geometry of the panel itself. Intentionally avoiding the 'stream of consciousness" approach found in his apex and tondo works, these paintings are more contrived and pre-planned with a direct figurative source. Although abstract on one level, his work embraces nature and realism, on the assumption that the origins of abstraction stem from naturalism. Martin eloquently uses his own vocabulary to extend the genre with intelligence using abstraction and illusion to interpret his metaphorical landscapes in a modern world.

Drawing from Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, Martin’s works stand between painting and sculpture. Using layers of oil or acrylic gel on hard reflective stainless steel, aluminium or Perspex, he fashions comb-like pieces of metal or board to move the paint across the surface in one movement, often repeating it again and again until the perfect balance of paint, translucence and striation is achieved.

Seen in their New York gallery debut, Jason Martin's smartly coiffed monochrome paintings have so many precedents, and so much intelligence, economy and all-round optical jazziness they are almost interesting.

A young British artist, Mr. Martin paints by covering largish surfaces of stainless steel, aluminum and plexiglass with (usually) a single color of oil paint; he then pulls a fine, sometimes specially made comblike tool across the wet paint, creating striations that move up and down according to various intervals and rhythms.

The electric-blue glide of ''Patrol'' wavers only slightly but nervously and consistently, like the results of lie-detector tests taken by the guiltless or dozens of flat-lining heart monitors. The marigold yellow surfaces of ''Cha-Cha'' and ''Samba'' have a lot of wave action; their wide undulations gleam, as if three or four spotlights were situated just above, or below, them. Elsewhere, as in the burgundy ''Boudoir,'' the surface ripples, like a curtain. And occasionally the raking tool is lifted and the surface broken, creating dramatic fissures of fringed paint.

The artists brought to mind by Mr. Martin's no-hands technique and glistening effects include Jackson Pollock and Robert Ryman, Alan Charlton, Bridget Riley and David Budd, an American painter whose monochrome surfaces accrue in small palette-knifed, light-deflecting strokes, as well as contemporary painters like James Hyde.

But mostly one comes away with a sense of sensational, tacky retro-chic, as suggested by titles like ''Stripsearch,'' ''Harlot'' and ''Slapjack'' and corroborated by the slickness of the paintings themselves. The problem seems to be one of taste. Mr. Martin needs to raise his sights higher so that his paintings can transcend the gimmicky mechanics of their own making. At this point they actually do seem to have been made by machines and have the brief dazzle of a Slinky toy making its way down the stairs.

Abstraction and illusion are not usually associated, but, as in that most sophisticated type of ancient ornament that uses plants, animals or human faces to make simplified, abstract patterns, the two really do meet in his [Jason Martin] work. This is the illusion that we find the most thrilling.. an illusion that might in turn evoke inner space, the density of a forest, the enormity of an ocean, the mystery of the night or the intensity of the sun, not to mention the music of the spheres.

For his new series of works, Jason Martin has created a stunning palette of red, pink and gold. The colours are suspended in either gel or oil, which Martin applies over panels of stainless steel, aluminium and copper. The artist designs his own tools to manipulate the wet paint across the surface of his chosen support. Working the pigment back and forth over the panel in single gestures, the painting is complete when Martin is satisfied with a final, defining mark. As such, each painting is a record of the movement of the artist’s body. The horizontal and vertical lines that are defined by the tool create an illusionistic space generated by the intersection of light on and through the medium to the underlying support. Martin refers to the paintings as reflections because of the way in which the light interacts with the varying grades of paint applications and shifts in the mark against the support.

In addition to the evolution of a complex palette, two further developments are present in the recent work. First, the introduction of irregular forms of support: trapezoid shapes that interrupt the formal symmetry of the ground. Second, while continuing to explore established vertical and horizontal formats, Martin introduces a center or apex in the work – a point at the middle of the bottom edge – that creates a fan-like composition.

Considered one of the most important painters of his generation, Martin was among the group of British artists to be launched by Charles Saatchi in the now-famous Sensation exhibition a decade ago.
Since then, Martin's singular style of working the luxurious surfaces of his monochrome paintings with a purpose-built comb has become well known internationally. In this new body of works, NUDES, he explores from a new perspective incorporating a vertical outline of his own body into the surface patterns.
NUDES presents a group of works where the action begins from the upper most reach of his arms, while standing on a ladder; he literally dances down the surface pressing with his body weight against the work, bending from one side to the other as he sways down the steps. This new vertical field is illustrated in three superb three-meter paintings, King (black|), Darling (red) and Her (ivory).
Other large square format works like the lush pink Couple provides a lively, rich skin tone surface that swirls and overlaps into organic folds of paint. If Couple is the body of the exhibition, a dryer, olive green work takes the opposite point of view as a more cerebral exploration of how the paint can be used to achieve a more curious, intellectual stance

A selection of medium and smaller works illustrate the wide range between these two points of view. The more juicy and erotic the pink-toned Nudes become, the more elegant and ethereal their opposite burgundy, aubergine and magenta paintings appear. And it is in the tension between these two sensibilities in his new work, that the energy, dynamism and surprise reveals itself. The viewer is taken into a new dimension through his work, the visual fields are animated by the gesture of his body and this physical presence is felt in each of the works regardless of size.

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

Jason Martin Green Wave painting on rolled canvas painted with artists oil paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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Jason Martin Oceania Painting painting on rolled canvas painted with artists oil paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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