E.C.A. Diariosur (Granada)

The passage of time

 

Robert Martin in the gallery exhibits a collection Poster Painstaking sustained in the technical execution and inspired by Islamic iconography

 

THE two most salient features of the painting of Robert Martin (Granada, 1951) are detailed technical implementation and themes drawn from mainly decorative motifs of Islamic civilization. The first aspect is surprising for its diligence, rigor and knowledge in the use of materials and their archaeological footprint, as if it were a relic of the past. The particular combination of sand, marble dust, pigments tiles and amalgamated in a solid and cohesive, gives these compositions a unique strength, but at the same t Empo makes objects appear to be made from a strange alchemy. The water stains, peeling of the walls, the appearance of painting in encaustic, overlapping shapes, as if several cultures during the course of the centuries had left their mark on the same piece of wall, and this gives these pictures look extremely materia them away from the dizziness and the haste with which today carries out its work the man in the contemporary city.

 

 

By way of tiles

 

 

Second are the issues, from both classical Islamic civilization from Baghdad and Damascus to Granada, as the Byzantine Empire, although in this case Robert Martin has not been set both in figures as tile murals in some of the first centuries of the great center of culture that was the Roman Empire or entity. When we look at how he uses interlocking tiles and baseboards of the rooms and courtyards of the Alhambra in Granada we realize how respected the p ntor key geometric principles involved in Moorish decoration: symmetry, linear growth or rotation with respect to two or more axes. They are principles that have their special set of abstract properties, with its huge but finite number of mathematical possibilities for each of them. Also many other reasons such as fountains, palm trees, domes, doors, windows and shutters. As for the paintings, straight out of the ruins of the diaconate of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome, fresh from the sixth and seventh centuries to schematize and modify procedures and such other forms of contemporary works that followed the classical tradition. So are the faces and heads emerging from the calcareous funds paintings of Robert Martin as if they were fragments of paintings the apses of the convents of Saqqarah Bauit and in Antinoe, in the Thebaid. Theophanic are visions, apparitions of the divine in the context of sacred worship. Thus Robert Martin is, as if to recover ancient stories and ancient cults of man, as if anhelase merge with the traces of time.

 

E.C.A.