Per Mårtensson
ELASTIC, Malmö, Sweden
On entering the untitled solo show at ELASTIC and pondering the reduced character of titles such as wall/light, wall/paint and wall/mirror (all works 2009), you’d be forgiven for thinking that Per Mårtensson is a man of small gestures. However, the wit and various conceptual departure points that underlie these first impressions constitute a central part of the Swedish artist’s work.
The three oil paintings (pictured above) that surround the entrance into the main gallery set the tone for what is to follow. Scaled 1:1 the untitled triptych gives the illusion of three storefront windows partly covered with vertical blinds. Hiding the entrance, when you first walk into the gallery from the outside, they trick the viewer into questioning whether the three parts are discrete units, while all the time remaining low key. They do not aim for photorealistic mimesis – your mind can clearly perceive the divisions between the works and the wall, and yet your eyes can’t seem to get enough of this illusionary game. Behind the blinds lies total darkness, the black background in the paintings suggesting a void that gets hold of you and sucks you in. By emphasizing the interrelationship between the painted storefront windows and the physical entrance Mårtensson gives them a spatial quality, making it necessary to enter into the suggested concealed space, indicated behind the blinds, in order to reach the inner room.
wall/mirror (2009). C-print on mirror and cardboard
But instead of continuing the narrative of the concealed, the exhibition suddenly becomes concerned with both presentation and the convention of the white cube. Mårtensson’s celebration consists of just as much devotion for the form of the exhibition space, as rebellious curiosity for the prerequisites of painting. Similar in its conceptual stringency and playfully subversive representation of the exhibition space to William Anastasi’s wall-on-wall pieces, Mårtensson turns the white walls into the subject of the show. In wall/light, a set of spotlights provides perfect lighting for a bare wall that seems to await a painting, but instead it’s the gallery wall itself that becomes the main protagonist here. Wall/paint, a wall painting occupying the entire wall, simulates in turn the perfectly lit wall opposite to it, mimicking the effects of being lit up. And finally, Wall/mirror is a photographic image of a mirror that seems to reflect the walls and the milky white light from inside the empty gallery space, though its faillure to actually reflect causes a feeling of uneasiness when standing in front of it. It’s as if you’ve been wiped out of the room. The unvarying light causes one’s sense of time and direction to vanish, while one’s attention is being gently tossed around from piece to piece. The room collapses in on itself: a merry-go-round of circular reasoning.
Installation view
While many tricks with the white cube have already been played, there is nevertheless a sense of urgency in the work of Mårtensson that allows itself some humour and wit paired with an existential and emotional dimension, while questioning its own status. Pierre Bismuth put it well: ‘The idea of making nothing both marks a refusal to take part in the blindness of all the hype, and anticipates the viewer’s value judgments and possible disappointment.’ It’s simply a kind of resistance in disguise.
Elena Tzotzi
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