REVIVE

A SOLO SHOW BY MARTIN WHATSON

CALIFORNIA, USA

September 2017

Martin Whatson’s work is instantly recognisable. Working primarily as a stencil artist over the past ten years, Whatson uses explosive colour against greyscale backgrounds to challenge ideas of perception, possibility and imagination in the urban environment. His pieces appear in London, Paris, New-York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Tokyo.

“REVIVE” is curated by Rom Levy and supported by LeBasse Projects. The exhibition marks a new phase in the artist’s creative direction. Found objects are reworked and repurposed to draw into question the individual status and collective value assigned to ‘raw materials’. Furniture and vintage photographs sourced by Whatson from flea markets and auctions are ‘vandalized’ with graffiti. Black and white cameo portraits of Victoriana-era women are given spray painted masks in full colour. This technique allows the found object to be decontextualised, by dismantling, obscuring and performing its original meaning – particularly the photograph. The spray can becomes a mode of theoretical obfuscation, warping the distance between centuries, and bringing to mind the work of surrealist artists such as Rene Magritte.