An Installation of Landscape Paintings By Cameron Martin; Focus 3 Opens June 25 in Tulsa at Philbrook Museum of Art
An Installation of Landscape Paintings By Cameron Martin; Focus 3 Opens June 25 in Tulsa at Philbrook Museum of Art
Philbrook Museum of Art brings the outdoors inside on June 25 with the opening of "Focus 3: Cameron Martin." A series of ten paintings by the artist will be installed in the museum's second floor Villa Galleries. A Brooklyn, New York-based painter, Martin creates stark landscapes denuded of the regenerative energy historically associated with representations of nature. Martin's images of mountains, trees, rocks and water are mediated through a number of art, historical and pop culture references, reminding us that, in the twenty-first century, nature has become just another cultural source material.
Philbrook's Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art Catherine Morris said, "Martin's paintings address a disturbing reality. Traditionally, landscape painting has been understood to exemplify the awe and grandeur of the natural world. For an artist like Cameron Martin, working in an unrelentingly urban environment, the landscape evokes a sense of loss and environmental damage. In 'Untitled (102)' for example, it seems that nature is overwhelmed, and caught in the process of succumbing to the pressures and demands our industrialized culture has placed upon it."
Executive Director Brian Ferriso added, "Cameron Martin is the third artist to be featured in the Philbrook Museum of Art's Focus series, which is devoted to highlighting living artists. Upon initial viewing, Martin's paintings appear to be straightforward renditions of the landscape. To fully understand Martin's paintings, the viewer must dig beneath the artificial surfaces to realize that his large, reductive landscapes are as much about contemporary society, popular culture, the environment, and industry as they are about the natural world."
"Philbrook is pleased to acknowledge the Raymond and Bessie Kravis Foundation and Meinig Family Foundation for their support of Focus 3 as well as the museum's expanding contemporary art program. Their vision is helping our audiences see the world through the eyes of some of today's most engaging artists," says Ferriso.
Cameron Martin says, "I am concerned with the representations of nature and our shifting relationship to the sublime. While previously, landscape may have evoked a terror of the infinite, given the world's current environmental course it now provides something akin to a terror of loss."
Martin will give a lecture about his work on June 25 at 2:00 p.m. at the museum.
Martin was born in 1970 in Seattle, Washington. He received a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University and studied at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Martin's work has been seen in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world including the 2004 Whitney Biennial. His work is included in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington; the Seattle Art Museum; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Martin has been awarded a Freund Fellowship (2005), an Artists at Giverney Fellowship and Residency (2001), and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (2000).
"Focus 3: Cameron Martin" will be on view through September 17.
In addition, installed on the museum lawn during the summer is "Robert Weingarten, 6:30 a.m." These luminous color photographs were each taken from the same location in Malibu Beach, at the same time each day, over the course of one year. Each photograph, measuring 40 x 40" is strikingly unique.
Philbrook Museum of Art realizes human potential through art by stimulating imagination, thought, creativity and community development. The museum is home to 8,500 permanent works of art housed in a beaux-arts Italianate villa just south of downtown Tulsa. A world-class restaurant and museum shop complete this outstanding and beautiful Tulsa attraction.
Images are available.
Source: Philbrook Museum of Art
Web site: http://www.philbrook.org/
