Heather Gwen Martin 2022 by Miles McEnery Gallery

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN VERSE

511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN: HEATWAVE By Kara L. Rooney To reach the cosmos, one has to dive. — Anton Vidokle Heat is often portrayed visually as a thermographic image of natural and built environments. For example, a heat map, as defined by the Oxford dictionary, is “a [graphic] representation of data in the form of a diagram in which data values are represented as colors.” But if one could truly see heat—its aesthetic and spatial qualities, its subtlety of coloration, and its linear frequency—it might look more like the recent paintings of Heather Gwen Martin. Using the language of semi-hard-edge abstraction, the Los Angeles-based artist employs color and form in ways that point the viewer toward the natural world, while at the same time invoking our consumer culture of the digital screen in her crisp applications of shape and line. Titled Verse, the fourteen individual works in Martin’s second solo exhibition for Miles McEnery Gallery read like fragments of a larger corpus in which each painting moves us sequentially—akin to sequential movement in music or literary texts—through an everexpanding field of color and space. Originally from Saskatchewan, Martin studied under Kim MacConnel at the University of California, in San Diego, and later continued her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. Working with MacConnel as a mentor, she was exposed to the Pattern and Decoration movement, which made a lasting impression on her output. MacConnel’s influence continues to resonate in her latest suite of paintings and the particular attention paid to pattern among the canvases, where a reduced vocabulary of forms jostle against one another in an Ariadne’s dance of balance and gesture. It was also in San Diego that Martin first encountered the work of Robert Irwin, one of the pioneers of California’s Light and Space movement. Irwin’s site-specific installations have had an influential impact on Martin’s mature practice, specifically in regards to their capacity for disorienting optical and corporeal immersion. Irwin’s creative philosophy—“To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions,”1—reverberates throughout Martin’s oeuvre, which oscillates exhilaratingly between a series of antagonistic forces: analog vs. digital, slow vs. fast, high vs. low, flatness vs. depth, and contemporary vs. historical. Consider, for example, how Martin simultaneously pays homage to and rejects such hard-edge predecessors as Josef Albers and Ellsworth Kelly in her adherence to the handmade and in her choice of materials: an oil-on-linen blend that, when viewed up close, reveals all of the application’s imperfections, including brushstroke, fabric texture, and slight manual

irregularities. Or how the artist’s emphasis on organic form undermines any clear associations with a bygone past. For Martin, it seems, perception resides somewhere in between: in the oneiric space of the not-quite future and the neon afterimage of a searingly hot Los Angeles afternoon. Martin sees painting as she sees the world around her. It’s a space in which other things occur— shapes, movement, color combinations, and dramatic shifts of scale. The large works in the exhibition demonstrate this immersive spatial quality most convincingly. In By Feel, two vertically oriented forms occupy the majority of the canvas, offset by a wispy stretch of pearl white brushwork that ends in a misshapen oval of crystalline blue. The larger shape on the left is comprised of an acidic citron (a favorite color of Martin’s in this series) and contains an irregular slit that disrupts the left and right hemispheres of the object. Extending from its left middle edge is a somewhat bulbous protrusion in a tea green shade that hovers lightly above the surface of the painting’s olive-hued background. Counteracting these verdant tones are small, spatulate formations in scarlet red, yale blue, and eggplant that mirror the larger vertical swath in hibiscus on the painting’s right side.

Such powerful color conversations are contained within and among the shapes for the artist, who speaks of the forms as “energy or forces that move in and out of the work.”2 Indeed, these shapes are not simply abstract but stem from an intensive investigation of the role abstraction plays in everyday life. Most often, these elements are determined by the resonance of an experience or are inspired by the direct observation of an object as it optically morphs in response to an external light source. It is for this reason that stability of place, which allows the artist to observe nuanced shifts in lighting and atmosphere over an extended period of time, is integral to Martin’s imagery. Indeed, it is this quality that links the artist most clearly to members of the Light and Space movement, who were similarly shaped by California’s atmospheric panoramas and by the attendant modulations of light and scale on the landscape. One might see the same in the work of the late painter and poet Etel Adnan, who memorialized the California landscape that became her home—specifically Mount Tamalpais and the Pacific coast—painting these geographical elements hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times over the course of her career.

structure while provoking a void or vacuum into which the viewer’s eye is pulled. This particularity is a strategy of resistance against the modernist legacy, which acted as the ultimate “equalizer,” rendering all things equal to the quality of form. As many critics have noted, this destroyed the symbolic power of the object and the role it played in a social context. Martin’s paintings, while resolutely abstract, always point back to a human encounter with place, made all the more palpable by evidence of the artist’s hand and her use of titling. Passage illustrates Martin’s punchy brand of wordplay that, while not concretely referential, leads the viewer into and away from the pictured image, proving that two opposing realities can both be true. Here, the movement invoked in the title echoes that of the painting’s dominant forms, which arc diagonally across the canvas in a shock of contrasting color: a ground of flatly painted crimson that butts up against various shades of green, crossed perpendicularly by a calligraphic slice with a grapely hue. The elements, while disparate, are united in the artist’s attention to hyperfine detail. This combination exudes a frictional energy whose power, as Donald Judd wrote in an early review of Lee Bontecou’s architectural abstractions, “lies in a polarization of elements and qualities, or at least in a combination of dissimilar ones.”3 In Flesh Glitch, one is reminded of human organs—perhaps the heart or liver—as a reniform shape intersects with an evenly painted weave of high-keyed lemon and apricot tones. The titular effect in this work is the opposite of that of Passage, where the word “glitch” serves as reference to both the screen and a lapse in perception while “flesh” recalls an immediate sensation of the “bodily.” Placed together in this context, the terms culminate in a linguistic tension that is as psychically emotive as it is optical. It is here that we arrive at the crux of Martin’s practice, anchored by its triangulation of color, language, and shape. The effect is one of hallucinatory clarity; these are not merely paintings, but rather, encounters. At stake in the work is a sensory overload of representations played out through a visual, haptic, and geographic strata of resemblances: the optical space of the canvas, the auratic glow of the Western United States, and the physical sensation one experiences in the presence of the work, which is not dissimilar to the way we might encounter the virtual landscape—as a mindbending delirium of RGB submersion filtered through the lens of an ocular headset.

But while Adnan’s paintings were intimately sized works that could be easily held in one hand, Martin emphasizes the immersive potential of the medium in her anatomically scaled references. Two sizes dominate the series, determined either by the artist’s arm span at 46 x 39 inches, or her height at 67 x 56 inches. Heatwave (from which the title of this essay derives) features two hollowed-out lanceolate forms set against a ground of icy thistle and honeyed yellow that crests in the top portion of the painting against a wave of fire brick red. Swell plays with an equally saturated palette that simultaneously invokes desert, sand, and sea. These paintings have an uncanny way of creating a

Verse, in its staccato format, suggests that maybe we can access such heights of experience only in fragments. Or maybe, to endure more would simply be “too much.” Either way, one is left with a sense of wanting, with a desire to touch these spaces and the implied warmth that emanates from just above the picture plane. For if, in fact, heat is the element required for alchemical transformation— for material and psychological movement from one state to another—then Martin, in this recent collection of paintings, has provided us with a compelling glimpse of what that might look like.

1. Lawrence Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin, expanded edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009). 2. Heather Gwen Martin, interview with the author, January 2022. 3. Donald Judd, Complete Writings 1959–1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

Kara L. Rooney is an artist and critic based between New York and Mexico City. Her critical writings have been published in Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and M/E/A/N/I/N/G, as well as included in publications by David Zwirner Publishing, Whitechapel Gallery, London, and MIT Press.

By Feel, 2021

Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Catcher, 2021 Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Chords, 2021 Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Flesh Glitch, 2021 Oil on linen blend 46 x 39 inches 116.8 x 99.1 cm

Forward, 2022

Oil on linen blend 46 x 39 inches 116.8 x 99.1 cm

Headwinds, 2022 Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Heatwave, 2021 Oil on linen blend 46 x 39 inches 116.8 x 99.1 cm

Passage, 2021

Oil on linen blend 46 x 39 inches 116.8 x 99.1 cm

Roughrider, 2022 Oil on linen blend 46 x 39 inches 116.8 x 99.1 cm

Swell, 2021

Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

To the Heart, 2021 Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Up, 2021

Oil on linen blend 67 x 56 inches 170.2 x 142.2 cm

Flash, 2022

Oil on linen blend 17 x 20 inches 43.2 x 50.8 cm

Reel, 2022 Oil on linen blend 17 x 20 inches 43.2 x 50.8 cm

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN

2005 “Paintings,” Lombardo Studios Gallery, Culver City, CA

Born in Saskatoon, Canada in 1977 Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA GROUP EXHIBITIONS EDUCATION 2001 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 1999 BA, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2022 “Verse,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2021 “Nerve Lines and Fever Dreams,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA 2019 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2017 “Currents,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA 2016 L.A. Louver, Venice, CA “Landing,” Murals of La Jolla, La Jolla, CA 2014 “Rogue Wave Projects: Heather Gwen Martin,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA 2013 “Pattern Math,” Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Culver City, CA 2010 “Recreational Systems,” Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Santa Monica, CA 2008 “Transpositional,” Seminal Projects, San Diego, CA

2022 “The Lyrical Moment: Modern and Contemporary Abstraction by Helen Frankenthaler and Heather Gwen Martin” (curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné), University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL 2021 “Flying Colors,” Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus, OH 2020 “By Way of Laughter and Trembling,” Durden and Ray, Los Angeles, CA “45 at 45: L.A. Louver Celebrates 45 Years with 45 Artists,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA 2018 “Chaos and Awe: Painting for the 21st Century” (curated by Mark Scala), Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN and Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA “The Agency of Art,” University Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA “Intersecting at the Edge: Karl Benjamin, Heather Gwen Martin and Eric Zammitt,” Claremont Museum of Art, Claremont, CA “Evolver,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA “Shaping Color,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA 2017 “On the Road: American Abstraction,” David Klein Gallery, Detroit, MI “California Connections: Selections from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego” (curated by Anthony Graham), California Center for the Arts, Escondido, Escondido, CA 2016 “How Many Miles to Babylon: Recent Paintings from Los Angeles and New York,” C24 Gallery, New York, NY “Atmospheric Abstraction,” Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA

“Touch” (curated by Edward Goldman), El Segundo Museum of Art, El Segundo, CA 2015 “Younger Than George,” George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, CA “View from the Edge of the Soul,” Durden and Ray, Los Angeles, CA 2014 “NOW-ISM: Abstraction Today,” Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH “Object Object!!,” Helmuth Projects, San Diego, CA “MAS Attack 6,” Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA

2013 “Rogue Wave 2013,” L.A. Louver, Venice, CA “Paradox Maintenance Technicians,” Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA “Theatrical Dynamics,” Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA “MAS Attack,” LA Mart, Los Angeles, CA

2005 “Bare Walls,” Gallery II, Chicago, IL Galleria Ninapi, Ravenna, Italy 2004 “OMA Regional 3,” Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA 2003 “Understood,” Cassius King Gallery, San Diego, CA “Emergent Stages,” Lyceum, San Diego, CA 2001 “Exhibitions and Time Arts Events,” Gallery II, Chicago, IL 2000 Project Cathedral, San Diego, CA

SELECT COLLECTIONS Equinor Art Collection, Houston, TX

2012 “The Very Large Array: San Diego/Tijuana Artists in the MCA Collection,” Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA “Painting on Edge II,” d.e.n. contemporary, Los Angeles, CA

Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH

2011 “Lucky 13,” MKG Art Management, Houston, TX “Welcome to Anywhere: Southern California Abstraction,” Southwestern College Art Gallery, Chula Vista, CA 2010 “Here Not There: San Diego Art Now” (curated by Lucía Sanromán), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA “Seven Person Show,” Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Santa Monica, CA “New Contemporaries III,” Project X Art, Solana Beach, CA 2009 “Social Climbing: On the Move,” Seminal Projects, San Diego, CA “Homing In,” Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

HEATHER GWEN MARTIN VERSE

9 June – 23 July 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery 515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2022 Kara L. Rooney Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Jeff McLane, Los Angeles, CA Color separations by Echelon, Los Angeles, CA Catalogue designed by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-77-9 Cover: Heatwave, (detail), 2021