SAM MARTIN
Phenemar
13 February – 13 March 2021

STATION | SYDNEY

Sam Martin draws a broad swath of influences into his painting practice, including but not limited to: Surrealism, Op-Art, traditional textile making, ancient forms of writing, action painting, the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, psychoanalysis, camouflage techniques of butterflies, Man Ray’s dust paintings and the theories of Michel Foucault. For Phenemar, Martin presents a series of dense pieces, each with varying degrees of paint and embroidery.

To create this body of work, Martin placed the canvases on the studio floor for months, allowing them to accumulate casual painted strokes, accidental spills and indiscriminate marks. These painted and marked canvases are then forensically covered with layers of machine sewn cotton thread, resulting in complex sequences of optically charged, labour-intensive, improvised patterns. The artist’s poems are buried within the composition, either drawn or written directly onto the surface, or recorded onto tracing paper and composed throughout the picture to create different degrees of legibility and illegibility. The energetic compositions suppress many traces of the original painting, suspending the viewer in a state of tactile stimulation. The transformation of these painted marks through to decisive embroidered forms examines a dialogue between accumulative chance, layering and incremental improvisation. This evolving process allows for a study of reorientation, slowness, focus and discovery.

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

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Sam Martin
Phenemar 2021
installation view

Phenemar

Sam Martin
Phenemar 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
109.0 x 58.0 cm

conjuring ambient copy

Sam Martin
conjuring ambient 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
151.5 x 62.0 cm

one opening pillars

Sam Martin
one opening pillars 2021
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over linen and wood board
115.0 x 72.0 cm

thraining like a n submerged copy 2

Sam Martin
thraining like a n submerged 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
64.0 x 25.0 cm

Notes on Phosphenes copy 2

Sam Martin
Notes on Phosphene 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over linen and wood board
70.0 x 59.0 cm

once spot merged with ratio copy

Sam Martin
once spot, merged with ratio 2021
cotton thread, watercolour and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
38.5 x 46.0 cm

one opening one copy

Sam Martin
one opening one 2021
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over burlap and wood board
60.5 x 54.5 cm

PROTECTIV sequence red two shows how pink copy

Sam Martin
PROTECTIV sequence red, two shows how pink 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
53.0 x 36.0 cm

conjuring consciousness ancient (ambient)

Sam Martin
conjuring consciousness ancient (ambient) 2020
cotton thread and synthetic polymer on canvas over wood board
32.0 x 36.0 cm