Chris Martin Takes on the Cosmos

Chris Martin in his Brooklyn studio. Photo: Jason Schmidt
 

By EDWARD WAISNIS January 25, 2025

Size matters to Chris Martin to the point that it has become a partner in his practice. He needs scale to accommodate the zeal he transmits as he carries the banner of painting forward.

Known as a pioneer amongst the Williamsburg scene coterie Martin has been working and showing for over more than three decades with memorable outings from the John Good Gallery, in the ‘90s, to the presentation of the monumental paintings at the Cocoran, in his hometown of DC, to numerous memorable gallery shows–from Mitchell, Innes and Nash to Anton Kern and David Kordansky, amongst others.

Chris Martin, “Dark Matter”, 2024, oil, acrylic, collage and glitter on canvas, 135 x 118 inches. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Chris Martin
 

Then, there is Martin’s accountability to his mentor, Al Held, who was pivotal to his career development. As a visiting lecturer, Held, inspired Martin to leave Yale and move to New York, thus setting his professional career in motion. The Held retrospective, at the Guggenheim, was a touchstone and motivator along the way. Martin is nearly as invested in collage as he is to monumentality. Incorporating everything from newspaper, to digital images, leaves, buttons, sequins, bread, vinyl records and his continuing favorite: glitter. Martin experimented with aluminum foil, in the 90s, suggesting the glitter be seen as a re-direct of this quest for glint.

Chris Martin: “Speed of Light”, installation view, Timothy Taylor, New York showing back of “Psychedelic Trance Dub”, 2024, right and back of “Dark Matter, 2024, in background. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Chris Martin

The exhibition, at Timothy Taylor, kicks off with Psychedelic Trance Dub, 2024, handing opposite the front desk, it is one of Martin’s forays into the swampy aquatic. cycloramas. It is as if we have decamped to a Louisiana bayou or been zapped through a wayback machine to the Jurassic period, providing a thrill one might receive from a cyclorama.

Turning to the gallery proper, brings contact with a tabula rasa constructed using the backside of a huge painting. Canvas peeks through the lattice of wooden stretcher bars, populated by pops of topicality in the form of collaged newspaper clippings; digital prints of galaxies; an obituary (Al Held); a Donna Summer CD cover; prints of Martin works and a reproduction of an Elizabeth Murray painting, creating a kind of vision board, or key, to the A-side. Dark Matter, 2024 builds on a jet black expanse laid down on painters tarps inflected by dots of white that become a field of stars, punctuated irregularly by pulsing quasars with a rhythm all to themselves. Evocations of a Saturday morning cartoon notions of space, as in The Jetsons, add levity to levitation. An imbroglio of trance culture meets physicality.

Chris Martin: “Speed of Light”, installation view, Timothy Taylor, New York, showing “Staring into The Sun 748 Russell Hill Road”, 2024, acrylic, collage, sequins and flitter on canvas, 135 x 236 inches; dytych, each panel 135 x 118 inches, left and “Dark Matter”, 2024, oil, acrylic, collage and glitter on canvas, 135 x 118 inches in background. Photo courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Chris Martin

The showstopper, amongst a trio of prodigious paintings, is Staring Into The Sun 748 Russell Hill Road, 2024. It’s ability to hold strident color against the bright white star with octopi arms–resembling something between Sputnik Louise Bourgeois and the alien invaders vehicles in War of the Worlds, as illustrated on vintage paperback cover versions of the novel–are set off by blue and silver glitter and sequins ‘shadows’ bring to the solar bands a near-3D effect that cause it to seethe and vibrate. The alternating wavering bands of red, green and yellow of the ground, in concert with the clue Martin has injected into the title, adding his upstate street address, confirms the experience of blinding sun hovering over a stylized bucolic range of hills. The result is that of an idyll set aflame.

Set into pockets, that come off as carved into plaster, are spotted along the lower third. Images brought in from various sources–everything from clippings from magazines, and books, postcards and a Bitches Brew CD sleeve–fill some of these alcoves emitting the aura of votive niches at a shrine.

Chris Martin, “Speed of Light”, 2024, oil, acrylic, collage and flitter on canvas, 135 x 118 inches. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Chris Martin
 

Speed of Light, 2024, represents the flip side of the coin, so to speak, by blasting the viewer into space, as a witness to a cosmological happening on a grand scale. Highlights of asteroids, planets and meteors preside in a pleasing blue array against a deep space void. Prerequisite collage elements are festooned along the edges adding eclectic interest. A treaded footprint brings up associations, from the obvious of Buzz Aldrin’s tracks on the moon to the ominous bloody tracks of contestants in the deadly games of an episode of Squid Game 2. From “space is the place” to ‘“tracks of my tears”.

Street image, January, 2025. Photo: Edward Waisnis

Like all art that carries the world into it, the world reflects art back. Witness the pitiful weed growing out of a sidewalk crack that I captured (above) on a corner, while waiting for the bus, in the icy winter light. I suppose it was the lingering memory of Speed of Light showing up as a reminder to get on with the work as I was formulating this piece. The galactic brought down to the pavement, bringing me back to the feeling transmuted by the ‘cosmos in a coffee cup’ pontificated by Godard and transposed, in his tipped homage, to the atmospheric fizz of an Alka-Seltzer tablet by Scorsese. Such gentle prods transport one from the mundane to a consideration of the profound.

Contrasting with the immensity–both in size subject–of the trinity the diminutive Mushroom Cabin, 2006-12, an oil executed on a found painting, harks back in time and motif to another of Martins staples. Keeping true to its title in presenting a charming cabin nestled in the gloaming surrounded by murky fields of fungi. The moonlit night sky hovering over delivers an Albert Pinkham Ryder punch.

Chris Martin, “Burst”, 2024-25, oil, acrylic, glitter and collage on canvas, 48 x 55 inches. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Chris Martin
 

To my mind, the masterpiece, if one is allowed to use such a term, hung solo in the smaller gallery, Burst, 2025, is a medium-sized work that commands a larger space. Another cosmological explosion bears down from a deep space that is enriched by the toile texture that the collaged fabrics (garments?) bring adding a spectral sumptuousness.

In a time when images are captured and shared in the blink of an eye, Martin, somewhat like a shaman of painting, has forged an individualistic path that we long to traverse. Easing the barrage on our cortex with axiomatic schematics that sizzle and burn with the intensity built from their birth.

Chris Martin: Speed of Light
Timothy Taylor
74 Leonard Street, New York
January 16–February 22, 2025

*An experience that Martin carried into this work came through working as an art therapist/case manager at a hospice treating victims of the disease at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
 

NOTE: There are a good number of videos on YouTube of interviews and lectures that are eminently helpful in tracking, and understanding Martin’s career. James Kalm’s Rough Cuts series has chronicled Martin’s work for nearly twenty years, and was indispensable in my own research in  the writing of this piece.