February 21 - March 22, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Mario Martinez, *Spring Revelations,* 2000

Mario Martinez is a true master of engaging, transfixing abstraction. His compositions are complex; they require intention and thought. One could revisit a work numerous times and have yet to see all that lies on the canvas. While non-representational, there is still a sense of something tangible, something to plant one’s feet on when viewing the work. His pieces feel lived-in, like a long walk somewhere between Martinez’s adopted home of Brooklyn, New York and his birthplace of Penjamo Village, Yaqui settlement in Scottsdale, Arizona. His show Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery displays work spanning from the 1990s to 2024 and is the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of the United States.

Like most contemporary abstraction, it is tempting to interpret Martinez’s work. What is meant by the temptation of interpretation is the underlying instinctual or perhaps taught compulsion to locate symbols and discern their specific meanings and assign values, personal and universal, to these meanings. However, it would be diminutive to pick apart his pieces and examine them under a microscope. While there are symbols throughout each piece—subtle nods to the natural world and Martinez’s personal ties to his Yaqui identity—these are not meant to singularly be peeled off the canvas by the viewer’s gaze. Instead, they are meant to affix the viewer to the piece as a whole. In Brooklyn, Canal Experience #1, this affixation is particularly apparent. While the pictorial plane is fragmented, with both organic and geometric forms colliding into one another, there remains a large, central patch of pale yellow. The area’s lightness in color and gaping shape is like a rip in tarp– a beam of light escaping a hole, a torn portal opening to another realm. Simply put, Martinez’s pieces are not meant to be interpreted, they are meant to be experienced, like stepping through a portal of butter yellow light.

While his work is indeed influenced by his Indigenous heritage, it is Martinez’s individual artistic journey that has so pointedly given him the tools to be such a prolific painter of abstraction. The contemporary art world is in need of artists like Martinez, his work allows a broader dialogue of artists and visual traditions that have been historically excluded from the Western canon of contemporary art and art history. Furthermore, his work urges viewers to reassess colonial ways of viewing. Perhaps it is time to put the constant excavation of meaning from abstraction to rest, perhaps it is time to simply experience a work. To be “in conversation” with an artist and their work requires listening. Perhaps it is simply time to listen.

Mario Martinez: Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations is on until the 22nd of March at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in Mayfair, London.

Mario Martinez: Yaqui & Brooklyn Conversations

February 21 - March 22, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Aileen Murphy: Crackers for Lorelei

Woo Jung Ghil: Savouring Silence