NEW YORK, NY.- Stephen Haller Gallery presents Lloyd Martin: Mettere an exhibition of vibrant new paintings by American artist Lloyd Martin. The exhibition opens April 5th and runs through May 12th. Martin manages to communicate nostalgia for the shock and pop of radical new creative expression
Meredith Mendelsohn ARTnews.
There is an intensely rhythmic, almost musical quality to Lloyd Martins painting, a kind of pulsing beat. There is also a distinctly architectural element, an inherent framework that grounds the structure and holds together disparate elements. In this series Martin continues his exploration of the transformative nature of time and use - the decay as well as revitalization of the urban landscape around his studio. This atmosphere inspires Martin in the creation of these rhythmically constructed abstract paintings.
The title Mettere, from the Italian to put or place, refers to the artists process of placing element upon element - building up the structure of the painting in rhythmic complex layers. Compositional elements that might have existed independently as small paintings are grafted pictorially onto the major works.
A Rhode Island School of Design graduate, Martin has been honored with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting. He has twice been awarded the Fellowship in Drawing, revealing his heightened awareness of line and form. That skill is evident in his series of prints for Landfall Press acquired by The Cleveland Museum of Art.
In the catalogue essay for a Martin exhibition in Taiwan, Wang Pin-Hua writes: with these frame-like lines, Martin creates a seemingly wider structure or multi-layered space by dividing and reconstructing the images, making the paintings extend far beyond the boundaries of the pictures.
And Stephen Bennett Phillips, formerly of the Phillips Collection and now curator of the Federal Reserve Collection in Washington, D. C, writes that Martins paintings yield a majestic grandeur with a human dimension and a universal appeal.