ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Blue on Blue, a new exhibition by Barcelona-born artist, Dani Marti.
Red on Red - Take 2, 2019, customised corner cube reflectors on aluminium, 240 x 357 x 10 cm.
In his latest exhibition, Dani Marti’s dynamic woven canvases and sculptural wall pieces explore the communion that exists between the artist and his materials. Marti’s use of industrial, factory-made objects and the nature of his making process – weaving by hand at a large scale – deeply involves his body, his self, in his practice.
Skilfully woven, bent and shaped from a sensuous melange of materials such as polyester and natural ropes, metal threads, beads, reflectors and wire, which Marti affixes onto bespoke aluminium frames, these sculptural constructions have a robust sense of the physicality of their making. The artist’s full body movement is engaged, and his gestural traces are inscribed in these works. For Marti, his process “goes from seconds of ecstasy to hours of torture. It is a very meditative way of working.”
Citing influences such as Lucio Fontana, Kasmir Malevich, and Frank Stella, these works partake of their abstract visual language. In Blue on Blue Marti’s interest in the formal qualities of his materials has reached new heights as he employs a reductive approach to arrest the viewer in the surface and encourage a moment of contemplation. With their luscious monochromatic palette, rich texture, repeated geometric forms, and pure materialism these woven canvases and wall sculptures bring the beauty of minimalism down to earth.
Green on Green (Light/Mixed) and Green on Green (Dark/Mixed), 2019, customised corner cube reflectors on aluminium frame, 105 x 85 x 12 cm (each).
Dani Marti was born 1963 Barcelona, Spain and lives and works between Sydney, Australia and Glasgow, U.K. Working across video, installation and public art, his unorthodox woven and filmic works speak to notions of portraiture and sexuality in Modernism, Minimalism and geometric abstraction. Since 1998, Marti has held over 40 solo exhibitions including, Songs of Surrender, Lausberg Contemporary, Dusseldorf (2020); I AM, ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne (2016); and BLACK SUN, commissioned for Perth International Art Festival (2016). Recent group exhibitions include Coterie to Coterie, The Biennale of International Reductive and Non-objective Art, Sydney (2019); Hunter Red: Corpus, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle (2018); Australasian Painters 2007-2017, Orange Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales (2017); The Public Body .02, Artspace, Sydney (2017); Immerse, Sandneskulturhus, Sandnes, Norway (2016); La Vida es Esto, Domus Atrium, Salamanca (2015); Dark Heart, the Adelaide Biennial (2014), ECONOMY, CCA Glasgow; Stills, Edinburgh (2013); Videonale-14, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2013); Let the Healing Begin, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2011); TOUCH: The portraiture of Dani Marti, a major solo retrospective at Newcastle Regional Art Gallery (2011) ; Social Documents: The Ethics of Encounter, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh (2010); Vocal Thoughts, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (2010) and Cinema X: I like to Watch, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2010).
Dani Marti’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; The University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art; Art Bank, Sydney; Chartwell Collection, Auckland; City Art Gallery, Auckland and the University of Wollongong, N.S.W; MUSAC, Leon, Spain. Marti has completed significant public works including one at Westfield Centrepoint 100 Market St, with John Wardle Architects. The first major monograph of Marti’s work was published in 2012 by Hatje Cantz.