MARTIN WEINSTEIN · Inside | Outside · Venice 2023

MARTIN WEINSTEIN INSIDE | OUTSIDE

CURATED BY: JONATHAN RIDER • EXHIBITION: SEPTEMBER 15 - NOVEMBER 19, 2023 CASTELLO 780 FONDAMENTA SAN GIUSEPPE • SESTIERE CASTELLO, 780 • 30122 VENEZIA IT • + 39 342 947 5913 MARTIN WEINSTEIN INSIDE | OUTSIDE cover: VENICE AFTERNOON INSIDE OVER EVENING OUTSIDE, 2023 | acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

ESSAY: D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI

“(I) Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear, both the things which are and the things which are produced. For substance is like a river in a continual flow… and there is hardly anything which stands still.”

MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS, BOOK V, MEDITATION 23

Martin Weinstein’s latest series of paintings push the boundaries once again of space and time, adding an even more transitory element to representation. In these paintings, it is as if we are seeing the world the way a neutrino might experience it, a place where physical boundaries are seamlessly penetrable creating a fluid space that defies the physical world as we understand it.

Weinstein, in the past, has challenged our perception, recording the same vista at different years, pairing different seasons and/or the employment of multiple angles in one day, which to me, has subtly pushed the concept of a multiverse. With his latest exhibition “Inside | Outside,” Weinstein adds another element by blending together interior and exterior spaces, worlds that surprisingly coalesce despite the colliding markers of place such as perspective and scale. With this new approach, we can begin to understand what the various sciences, especially physics, have been debating about for quite some time: the presence of multiple parallel universes.

In most instances where I find these parallels, Weinstein places the interior view of a living area over an exterior vista – what he sees out the window of a particular living area – that together form a dazzling, albeit divided state of place. For instance, in Venice, Inside Over Outside, 3 Years, we see his well-established sensitivity to time that at first sight, is complicated by an exterior view that diagonally weaves itself through a living area. With the addition of Weinstein’s Manet-like brushwork that makes soft waves sparkle and dance, continued

vased flowers that sing for our attention and a skyline of the timeless beauty of Venice that creates a horizon, and we quickly come to grips with a vision that propels an everyday moment into a fully sensory experience.

With Grand Canal, Huge Rococo Mirror, Inside Over Outside, the representation is further elaborated upon by the interior space as it repeats its details in an adjacent reflection. Also in this instance, the exterior view he sees from this new location is distinctly residential, as clay roofs and puffy clouds quietly contrast the diagonal shapes and structure of the overlapping interior space. Having three realities to contend with, Weinstein manages to present a composition that not only holds together, but implies a continually expanding space that exceeds the boundaries of its physical edges. This often happens with Weinstein’s work, as he plays with perception, thus expanding the viewer’s concept of what space and vision actually entails. By this, I mean whenever we walk around, our eyes constantly jut from detail to detail as we make calculations and learn a space. A bird sings, a car horn beeps and we look out a window as we continue to move through a room. Coupling this with the fact that our perception of our environment is not static, as both the physicists and philosophers like Marcus Aurelius suggest, it makes sense to represent reality in a multitude of ways. So, when Weinstein represents an individual concept of space and time, he chooses to employ the idea of a non-static proposition: a living, breathing and changing world.

ESSAY: D. DOMINICK LOMBARDI, CONTINUED

Additionally, what makes Weinstein’s new Italian paintings seem more familiar is the fact that the interior spaces are painted ‘close-up’ with more intimate detail, while the exterior views are represented as distant and atmospheric. This main approach to the creation of his art gets a little more complicated when he reverses the overlay, placing the outdoor representation over the indoor setting. One example is Grand Canal, Afternoon, Outside Over Inside, where we see the brilliance of the rippling, reflective water almost completely obliterate the roomscape that lies beneath. It is only when we see the suggestion of the interior architectural details of windows, a glass table top or a person reading at the bottom right that we understand we are looking through the outer to the inner space. This flipping, which in its essence is counterintuitive, has a very different optical effect. Something more akin to an after image than a proper spatial sequence. As a result, Weinstein creates a dreamlike vision that a Surrealist like Rene Magritte would find compelling.

So what is it about Martin Weinstein’s art that attracts us? I believe it is an art that transcends both our understanding of time and space while managing a delicate connection to reality. There is a belief, and one that I subscribe to, that great art should pull you in, make you think, present a new way of seeing the world around us and Martin Weinstein’s art does just that. To quote Arne Glimcher, “Art is a tool by which society extends its perception,” something that is fulfilled in this new series of paintings.

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D.

DOMINICK LOMBARDI MARTIN WEINSTEIN : INSIDE

COMMENTARY: JONATHAN RIDER

Martin Weinstein’s paintings of Rome, Venice, and Lucca are made on location, over several sessions, and illustrate a certain time and a certain experience had by the artist and his partner, Teresa (who appears in several works), on their travels throughout Italy. Painting what he sees and what he wants to see in each locale, the selection of twelve works in Inside | Outside can be simultaneously read as a travel log and a snapshot of a time and a relationship — each are an attempt to capture or make permanent a specific memory of a specific place.

Weinstein’s relationship to these places, most crystalline in their painted form, is informed by repeat viewings from alternating perspectives and times. Whether he’s depicting his garden in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, with its dramatic views facing west over the Hudson River, or Venice — a city we both love — time seems to collapse and shift into an unstable, layered image that feels both familiar and foreign. In some paintings, Weinstein reimagines spectacular sites that have captured and recaptured artists’ and the public’s imagination for centuries: Rome’s Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, where monumental, winged Victories stride over the Tiber, or Venice’s sparkling Grand Canal, alive with boats moving in every which direction. In a pair of paintings set inside an ornate apartment in Lucca, he recalls the quiet interiors of Édouard Vuillard or Vilhelm Hammershøi. Seemingly less “spectacular” than their Roman and Venetian counterpoints, these domestic scenes are equally elusive, never still in their melding of time and space, as they attempt to capture a moment that’s just about to slip away.

detail: GRAND CANAL, AFTERNOON, OUTSIDE OVER INSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

WEINSTEIN

Continuing my preoccupation with exploring perceptions of reality the works in Inside | Outside extend the layering of times and spaces in my earlier work to include the layering of places.

In these paintings transparent acrylic sheets are used to superimpose days, years, near, far, and now Interior and exterior. I have, in the past, used the depiction of a room as an expression of the interior of the mind and to me these new paintings represent a vision of transcending the mind’s habitation in the body. The walls become permeable and inside and outside become one space.

ARTIST STATEMENT: MARTIN

INSIDE | OUTSIDE

APARTMENT IN LUCCA, SUNNY AFTERNOON INSIDE OVER RAINY AFTERNOON OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

| 11.5

14 x 2.5

ROME MIDDAY, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE , 2023 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets

x

inches

APARTMENT, LUCCA, AFTERNOON INSIDE OVER DUSK OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

ROME, STORMY AFTERNOONS, OUTSIDE UNDER INSIDE , 2023 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

VENICE, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE, 3 YEARS , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 17 x 2.5 inches

VENICE AFTERNOON INSIDE OVER EVENING OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

ROME, MORNINGS, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE , 2023 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

GRAND CANAL, EVENING, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

AFTERNOONS, VENICE, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

GRAND CANAL, HUGE ROCOCO MIRROR, INSIDE OVER OUTSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

GRAND CANAL, AFTERNOON, OUTSIDE OVER INSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 11.5 x 14 x 2.5 inches

GRAND CANAL MID DAY, OUTSIDE OVER INSIDE , 2022 acrylic on multiple acrylic sheets | 14 x 11.5 x 2.5 inches

MARTIN WEINSTEIN | CV

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018

PLATONIA

Goddard Center for Visual Arts, Ardmore, OK

2024

MOMENT TO MOMENT

Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT

2023

INSIDE/OUTSIDE

Castello 925, Venezia, Italia

LOOKING THROUGH TIMES

Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY

2022

Vedute PALINSESTI

Castello 780, Venezia, Italia

MOMENT TO MOMENT

Pearl Fincher Art Museum, Spring, TX

2021

MOMENT TO MOMENT

South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD

2020

MOMENT TO MOMENT

Hardin Center for Cultural Arts, Gadsden, AL

2019

MOMENT TO MOMENT

The Parthenon Museum, Nashville, TN

BEYOND A DAY

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

2017

PLATONIA

Peggy Notebaert Museum of the Academy of Science, Chicago, IL

PLATONIA

Quincy Art Center, Quincy, IL

2016 PLATONIA

MSW STUDIO, New York, NY

MARTIN WEINSTEIN: PAINTINGS

Westfield Athenaeum, Westfield, MA

2012

MARTIN WEINSTEIN: PAINTINGS

Franklin Riehlman Fine Art, New York, NY

2010

THE PORTRAIT IN NATURE

MacNider Art Museum, Mason City, IA

THE PORTRAIT IN NATURE

Idaho Falls Arts Council, Idaho Falls, ID

THE TERESA PAINTINGS

Visual Arts Center, Washington Pavillion, Sioux Falls, SD

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta, GA

MARTIN WEINSTEIN: PAINTINGS

Franklin Riehlman Fine Art, New York, NY

2008

KENOTEN

Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY

STRATA

AFP Galleries, New York, NY

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Hillstrom Museum of Art, Saint Peter, MN

SUBJECTIVE PORTRAITS

SUNY Utica, Edith Barrett Fine Art Gallery, Utica, NY

2007

SUBJECTIVE PORTRAITS

Krasl Art Center, MI

SUBJECTIVE PORTRAITS

The Parkersburg Art Center, PARKERSBURG, WV

2006

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Waterworks Visual Art Center, Salisbury, NC

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Emporia State University, Emporia, KS

TIME LANDSCAPES

4 Star Gallery, Indianapolis, IN

MARTIN WEINSTEIN

TEW Galleries, Atlanta, GA

2005

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Jacqueline Casey Hudgens Center For The Arts, Duluth, GA

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS

2004

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

The Anderson Fine Arts Center, Anderson, IN

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

The Parthenon, Nashville, TN

2003

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL

ILLUSION AND CERTAINTY

Elliott Museum, Hutchinson Island, Stuart, FL

1996

MARTIN WEINSTEIN: PAINTINGS

MyungSook Lee Gallery, New York, NY

1994

MARTIN WEINSTEIN PAINTINGS (1989-1994):

MUTABLE PERCEPTION

List Gallery, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA

continued

MARTIN WEINSTEIN : INSIDE

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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019

REMEMBER WHEN IT WINTER WAS Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

2023

LEMON SKY

Lichtundfire, New York, NY

REFRACTURE - VISUAL REALIGHNMENT

Lichtundfire, New York, NY

2022

FOREST BATHING

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Woodstock, NY

FLORA AND FAUNA

Lichtundfire, New York, NY

2021

LANDX

Red Fox Contemporary Art, Pound Ridge, NY

IN FULL BOOM

Lichtundfire, NY

IN CONVERSATION

Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York, NY

PRESENCE

Lichtundfire, New York, NY

2020

PENDULUM OF TIME

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

EDGE OF ABSTRACTION

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

WATER WORKS

Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, NY

2018

PATTERN, POWER, CHAOS AND QUIET

Housatonic Museum of Art. Bridgeport, CT

LUXURIOUS GROWTH

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

SENSE OF ICE

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY

2017

COUNTERPOINTS TO THE NARRATIVE:

Sparky Campanella, Mark Sharp, and Martin Weinstein

Lichtundfire Gallery, New York, NY