Gaspar Martinez : Nausea

13.10 – 13.11.2022

Joyful Disgust: Gaspar Martinez’s Nausea
Essay by Paul D’Agostino*

Gaspar Martinez has a painterly tendency to couple energetic, gestural mark-making, bold line work, vibrant palettes, sparely textured surfaces, and variably quirky compositional choices with a quietly humorous, subtly critical sense of curiosity. His subjects of playfully abstract representation have been fgures and things, places and rooms, objects real and imagined, and formal riffs on explorations of color and geometric abstraction. In Nausea, the London-based Argentinian painter coheres most all such expressive means and modes in a body of work merging notions of distaste, disgust, and questionable utility with ideals of rather improbably sourced joy, grace, and beauty.

This is how we fnd ourselves not repulsed at all by a large painting of a toilet brush, towering and teetering in the corner of a powder blue washroom, rather unexpectedly charmed by it. This is why we look at a nimbly drawn rendering of an orange-lined toilet tank in a shadowclad water closet and see the dangling fush cord and baby blue faucets as not even slightly unpicturesque, but instead familiarly tangible, even strangely friendly. We might not have imagined tracking down the home of an old man we don’t know so that we can ask to have a peek at his lovely bidet, but we might want to do precisely that upon seeing Martinez’s treatment of one of these peculiarly shapely bathroom features in brilliant, gleaming green, jutting out from a goofly gridded wall of earthy red tiles.

As with the hoovers, drying racks, pool cleaners, bathtubs, dental foss, razors, and beard trimmings featured in other works, Martinez found himself initially disgusted by all of the toilet related objects, only to then be increasingly intrigued by them. His subjects are items of physical upkeep and personal hygiene that are so quotidian we might hardly notice them, unless we fnd them distasteful or gross, whereby we’re not wont to shower them with aesthetic attention, curiosity, and pathos. Moreover, they’re such commonplace objects of domestic existence that it’s easy for their formal or design-related beauties, in some cases, to escape our notice, or for their unnecessary clunkiness or stupidity of perceived convenience to not register in our minds, even as we use them. All the same, the artist is no more interested in conveying puerile bathroom humor than he is in making claims about the ills of consumerism. His implicit statement with these works is of a much simpler sort: These objects might be disgusting, wonky, or easy to ignore, but they’re also extremely interesting to paint and, as it turns out, quite surprisingly engaging to look at in paintings.

Martinez takes the title for his show, Nausea, after the eponymous novel by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. It tells the tale of Antoine Roquentin, a peevish, embittered protagonist whose solitary life and general despondency leave him sensing existential dread and meaninglessness everywhere, including in the most mundane objects of his everyday surroundings. But Martinez wasn’t inspired by the book to make the paintings; he discovered it only after several of the works were underway. This thematic coincidence convinced him to continue his painterly exploration of how certain things might nauseate or disgust us – or at best, seem patently uninteresting – while also eliciting feelings of pleasure or joy. Consider this as you view Martinez’s works. Enjoy the latent nausea of his curiously pleasing show.

*Paul D’Agostino is an artist, writer, curator, and translator.

Gaspar Martinez

Toilet brush, 2019

Oil and charcoal on canvas

148 x 155 cm

Artwork ID: 1001

Gaspar Martinez

Toilet string, 2020

Oil and charcoal on canvas

100 x 100 cm

Artwork ID: 1004

Gaspar Martinez

My Granfather’s bidet (El bidet de mi Abuelo), 2018

Oil on paper

50 x 65 cm

Artwork ID: 995

Gaspar Martinez

Don’t cut your hair in the bath, 2020

Oil and pencil on paper

50 x 66 cm

Artwork ID: 1006

Gaspar Martinez

Man shaving, 2019

Oil and pencil on paper

20 x 28 cm

Artwork ID: 997

Gaspar Martinez

Sleepers study, 2018

Oil and pencil on paper

29 x 41 cm

Artwork ID: 996

Gaspar Martinez

Study of washing line, 2018

Oil on paper

29 x 41 cm

Artwork ID: 999

Gaspar Martinez

The washing line, 2020

Oil on canvas

170 x 200 cm

Artwork ID: 1005

Gaspar Martinez

Dental floss, 2019

Oil on canvas

190 x 120 cm

Artwork ID: 1000

Gaspar Martinez

Pool cleaner, 2019

Oil and pencil on paper

20 x 28 cm

Artwork ID: 1003

Gaspar Martinez

Pool Cleaner 2, 2021

Oil on canvas

220 x 158 cm

Artwork ID: 1002

Gaspar Martinez

Man hoovering, 2019

Oil and pencil on paper

20 x 28 cm

Artwork ID: 1007

Gaspar Martinez

Man hoovering N2, 2019

Oil and pencil on paper

20 x 28 cm

Artwork ID: 998

Gaspar Martinez

Gaspar Martinez (b. 1982) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received education and worked in Argentina. In addition to Argentina, he has participated in numerous solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, and art fairs internationally in various European countries and the United States. He has held solo exhibitions at the Cosmocosa Gallery in Buenos Aires and the Argentine Consulate. His works have also been exhibited at El Mirador in Buenos Aires; Charles Banks Gallery in New York; Centotto Gallery in New York; BOS Gallery in Dublin; Bow Industrial Park in London; and Ambidexter Gallery in Istanbul. Martinez currently lives and works in London, United Kingdom.

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