Using an aluminum brush or cardboard, Jason Martin spreads out the monochromatic medium and creates swirly striated patterns and it perfectly matched with Venice, the city of light and water. He was born in 1970, in the UK and graduated from Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London. He was recognized of his ability early enough so when he graduated from Goldsmiths in 1993, he participated in the exhibition at Lisson Gallery. Also he joined the 'Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection' exhibition starts at Royal Academy, London then tours Berlin and New York, and from this exhibition he gains an international reputation as a representative member of yBA.

Jason Martin created an active monochrome painting with various range of brush strokes. He works on a painting in a vigorous way almost like a choreography using his whole body with his specially designed brush. Though his works is physical immediacy of action painting, the painting creates a place for a contemplation combining with Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism.

The color in this painting immerses in different hue. With its brush strokes, the pattern is flowing reflected with a light on the stainless steel surface. So the painting offers the audience to experience a spiritual and sensual perception in infinite spaces. It draws the inner intensity into burgundy colors with its organic shapes, and it makes the beholder concentrating on the monochrome but eliminating its monotony. His combed curvy lines have various matiere and depth and it looks more striking under the light. Erased its materiality, it turns the surface into the sublime and contemplate spaces. Also with its depth of a stacked medium, the painting is almost linked to sculpture.

Jason Martin’s works subscribe to the Western tradition of gestural painting. First of all, Martin applies saturated, monochrome color on mirroring aluminum, stainless steel or translucent plexiglass panes. Then, the artist pulls large brushes, which he specifically creates for each painting according to the width of the canvas, across the whole pastose surface, without interrupting the movement.

Depending on the chosen background, application of color and brush, very different wave-like movements emerge, in which the brush stroke itself creates the motif. The brush stroke is at times smooth, at other times abrupt. The material is partly subtracted, letting the support shine through in some areas between the grooves created by the brush strokes and comb-like striations. The three-dimensional effect of the combed structure is highlighted by means of shimmering effects combined with light-deflecting edges and crevices, giving the viewer a thoroughly sensual impression of materiality.

Every object is ultimately created from a mixture of chance and will and, as such, cannot be reproduced. Similarly, the objects suggest individual, irreproducible illusions and associations to the viewer, to the effect that the painting background is reactivated with every movement.


Source:
(Adams, Brooks, Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 18.9. - 28.12.1997, London 1997, n. p.) “I explore a space that leads the viewer to an illusionary encounter” (Jason Martin, 1998 in: Gisbourne, Mark: Jason Martin Malerei; Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, 30.5.-16.7.1998, Nordhorn, 1998, p.36)

Jason Martin, a leading exponent of the current abstraction in England, was born in 1970 in Jersey, an island in the English Channel. 18-year-old Jason Martin moved to London, where he first enrolled at Chelsea School of Art in 1989. In 1990 he changed to the London Goldsmiths College, which was, at this time, by the `Young British Artists` in the center of a new art scene. In 1993 Jason Martin completed his studies with a Bachelor's degree.

As an artist Jason Martin developed a very distinctive style. The structures of the color application are the real subject of his monochrome, abstract and expressive works. This is realized for example by a very pasty relief-like paint. Also in the works with oil paint on metal image carriers, the powerfully moving brush stroke to the center and subject of the picture. Jason Martin even made custom brushes. The strong colors and the idiosyncratic play of light and shadow on the move over-molded surfaces making the special appeal of his paintings.

Inspiration for his art is drawn from Martin Abstract Expressionism of the postwar period. Whose instinctive, expressive and access material wealth he united with the clear aesthetics of minimalism, which despite its muted color choice uncommonly energetic, especially sensitive work expresses and develops a sensual shine.

International solo exhibitions have made known far beyond England's borders, the works of Jason Martin from the 1990s. These include, for example, shows in Los Angeles (2004), Braga / Portugal (2006), Paris (2006), Gütersloh (2007), Malaga (2007), Stockholm (2009) and Venice (2009). Jason Martin lives and works in London.