Chris Martin “Saturn Returns” at David Kordansky Gallery

David Kordansky Gallery is very pleased to announce Saturn Returns, an exhibition of new paintings by Chris Martin. The show, which will occupy both of the gallery’s exhibition spaces, as well as its facade, will open on April 9, 2016, and remain on view through May 21. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 9 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm.

Working from a heterogeneous array of cultural traditions, Chris Martin makes paintings that serve as living documents of the eternal present. He privileges stylistic diversity and immediacy over predetermined aesthetic ideas, generating an art that can be as primal as it is knowing, as vibrantly joyful as it is meditative and hermetic. For this reason, Martin’s career is characterized by an evolution of thematic cycles rather than strictly linear development. The overt influences – musical, spiritual, and art historical – that appear throughout his work are acknowledgments of his desire to return to a common well, or universally accessible source of inspiration.

Saturn Returns takes its title from an astrological cycle that marks 30-year periods in an individual’s life. Each return is said to begin at about age 27, which happens to be when a number of prominent rock musicians died from substance abuse, suicide, or other violent or unexpected causes. They include Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and most recently Amy Winehouse, whose presence looms over much of the exhibition. Paintings dedicated to Winehouse have formed a recent infatuation for Martin, and here for the first time he will show a large-scale, larger-than-life, figurative portrait of the tragic and iconic singer.