Art Basel Miami Beach | Galleries -- Philip Martin Gallery will present works by five artists of different ages and backgrounds: Kwame BRATHWAITE, Brian BRESS, Katy COWAN, Tomory DODGE and Nathan MABRY.
Philip Martin Gallery’s booth is B22.
Photographer and media theorist Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938, lives New York) was one of the first people to promote “Black is Beautiful.” A shrewd visual thinker, Brathwaite recognized that in order to change how people thought about themselves, he had to change what they actually saw. Positive images of African-Americans were few and far between in the media landscape of the late 50s/early 60s. Brathwaite set about creating a visual armature where none had existed previously, using his connections in art, fashion and music to disseminate Black is Beautiful - one of the most important ideas of the twentieth century.
Brian Bress (b. 1975, lives Los Angeles) will present new wall-mounted video works. Brian Bress's work reminds us that the relational nature of art objects and screens is both virtual and physical. In contemporary life, we not only do we watch screens - we also touch them, hold them close, and allow them to inhabit, if not define, our personal space and how it works. The sense in which Bress’s ‘screens’ act like paintings, or sculptures, allows his art to push forward not only our sense of what art objects are and what they can do, but also what modern technologies are doing to us.
Katy Cowan (b. 1982, lives Los Angeles) will present wall-mounted painted aluminum sculptures. Cowan uses an array of media - ceramics, bronze casting, traditional rope making, fabric dying - to make works that stress the materiality of the art object. Cowan’s rope works are designed to hang on the wall. They utilize the sense of the painterly frame - the grid - as the basis for composition. Cowan’s stretched fabric works call upon the language of textiles, a medium in which Cowan was trained, to point to the presence of herself as a topic in her own works.
Tomory Dodge (b. 1974, lives Los Angeles) will present new large-scale abstract oil-on-canvas paintings. Over the course of a nearly twenty year career, Dodge has become known for dynamic paintings that explore the representation and mechanics of picture-making. Painting, one of the oldest means of expression, remains a vital key to understanding the nature of images in modern life, whether they are experienced in the physical world, on our devices, or on-line. Tomory Dodge writes, “I have often talked about paintings being inherently contradictory things. They are objects that are spaces, walls that are windows. They are the intersection of object and image. Painting maintains a physical anchor at a time when the image generally is becoming more and more ethereal - everywhere and nowhere at the same time.“
Nathan Mabry (b. 1978, lives Los Angeles) will present “Nostalgia of the Infinite (La Lune).” In a surreal moment, a cast stainless steel bird rests atop a monochrome abstract aluminum sculpture. The metal plate forms are arranged to create a font that spells the letters i-b-i-s. The ibis is a species found all over the world and in the symbolism of many different cultures. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the ibis represents Thoth, the deity that maintains the universe. The large circular form of Mabry’s work is drawn in part from David Smith’s monumental, “Circle I” (1962). Mabry writes that Smith’s work has its own “aesthetic relationships to geometric masks and other celestial systems." Mabry's sculpture stands as a portal and a representation of time. This approach, Mabry writes, "explores an already-told story to reveal new myths.”
Art Basel Miami Beach is located:
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139.
Philip Martin Gallery booth is B22
Public Days
Thursday, December 6, 2018, 3pm to 8pm
Friday, December 7, 2018, 12 noon to 8pm
Saturday, December 8, 2018, 12 noon to 8pm
Sunday, December 9, 2018, 12 noon to 6pm
Philip Martin Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11am-6pm and by appointment. For further information and images please contact the gallery at +310-559-0100 or info@philipmartingallery.com.
Philip Martin Gallery
2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
+310-559-0100
info@philipmartingallery.com
