PORTRAITURE AS AN ACT OF IMPOSSIBILITY
Marti’s practice is driven by the simbiology of industrial-everyday materials, craft practices, conceptualism and formalism. He creates dynamic woven constructions and sculptural installations that combine intellect and a sensual minimalism immersed in a Baroque sensibility. There is a strong inflection of portraiture in this series of works which are, in essence, 'swatches' of (fabric) which capture moods, intensities, and personalitiesThe work is therefore never cold, but recalls the intimacy of fabric in contact with a body; the works become representational not only of states of feelings, but also of regimes of class and power, and the idiosyncrasies of personal psychosexualities.
For Marti, both weaving and (video) taping represent an act of bondage, a ritual which enables the artist to ‘possess’ the person that is portrayed.
My practice is stimulated by what I perceive as challenges within the act of
portrayal. I am fascinated by what lies behind the surface of the subject as
an essence to be grasped or sought after through attempting to re-present
it. The dialectic between the possibility and simultaneous hopelessness of
this endeavour emerges in the abstraction of large-scale woven works, and
videos that borrow from the language of documentary. The formal polarity
that exists between these ways of working is the terrain on which I am able
to examine how in approaching the physical and mediated surface of
information, alternate readings may be generated by the viewer.