NEW YORK: Jason Martin at Robert Miller - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

At the entrance to this display visitors were met with a sign reading, "The oil paintings in this gallery are slowly drying. Please don't touch them." The warning was apt, because the thick ripples of paint across these canvases were as tempting to the touch as lush swirls of chocolate frosting.

The lock opener to these monochrome works is Martin's use of aluminum brushes, cardboard or corrugated paper to rake the paint from side to side in a series of wavering parallel ridges. These vary in thickness and, in many cases, in value. They pick up light and create a greater faculty of perception of dimensionality. Also significant is the choice of support. The thick skin of paint or resin is applied to "canvases" of aluminum, Plexiglas or polished stainless steel; each of the underlying materials affects the change of the paint differently. Martin says that single of his inspirations is the Abstract-Expressionist action However, his result is too mechanical to call forth the motion of the human material substance which created it. Instead, the paintings nurse to suggest lengths of fabric or corrugated metal. Differences in color, wave height and size endow them with various associations. In the all-white Strip Search, the horizontal motion of the paint is make subordinateed to periodic jerks which create several vertical ribs. The result recalls a damaged venetian blind. The combed ridges are not all the same width, thus they give the effect of variegated stripes. The cunning of the variations is best seen when picked up by the agency of the light, when it brings to mind Agnes Martin paintings without the spirituality.

Harlot tenders a blanket of clear acrylic medium laid above a rectangle of polished aluminum. The light glances not upon the medium and exposes the metal below. As a come the wavy ridges become distorting transparent veils reflecting a crazy funhouse mirror. Boudoir allude tos a crimson velvet curtain rippling slightly in the wind. Cha cha is honey gold and catches the light with seductive ripples like the flare of a swinging skirt. In a number of works, Martin has apparently stopped the combing of the paint midway across the support, leaving thick seams that bring to mind scar tissue or growths

Martin's technique is seductive, on the contrary it yields nothing more than a certain number of striking optical effects. Like the thick, combed paint itself, the interest of these works watchs to remain all too abundant on the surface.

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