Reception: Thursday, July 4, 5-7PM
Art Placement is pleased to present “When I Can No Longer Play For Time: Shift/Turn/Shuffle/1992-2019”, Martin Bennett’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery. Bennett studied painting at the Alberta College of Art and Design in the late 1980s and early 1990s, establishing himself as a prominent artist in the Calgary scene. He has resided in Saskatoon for the last 12 years, though he divides much of his studio time between Canada and England. Art Placement is delighted to present this mid-career survey of Bennett’s work, highlighting major series drawn from several decades of his production as well as a selection of new paintings; mature works that are visually striking and introspective, expanding thematically, aesthetically, and conceptually upon the numerous threads woven throughout his past work.
"I've only ever been a photocopy machine." - Martin Bennett
Martin Bennett is a contemporary artist who works primarily in painting, which he pursues from a philosophical perspective. Over the course of more than 30 years he has developed a significant body of work that contemplates various potential frictions within painting, art-making, and the history of representation. Employing a variety of strategies and techniques including photography, photocopying, drawing, painting, and sanding, his work teeters between seemingly opposite concepts, practices, and forms: photography and painting; images and objects; figuration and abstraction; material and picture; personal and impersonal; originality and banality; home and away; mechanical mediation and the handmade; and the universal and the vernacular. Born in 1970 in Winchester, England, Bennett immigrated to Canada in 1975. He has exhibited his work throughout Canada and abroad since the early 1990s, including solo and group exhibitions in Saskatoon, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles, Zurich, and London, UK.
Martin Bennett, "Static Image Drawing/Green/Horse/New Forest/Hampshire", 2019/2010, graphite, conte, watercolour and ink on paper, 44" x 30"