Featuring an interview by writer and curator Alison Gingeras, this fully illustrated exhibition catalog marks the Brooklyn-based artist Eddie Martinez first solo exhibition with Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Martinez is known for his large-scale, energetic canvases in which densely built-up layers of oil and enamel paint are punctuated by elements of collage. The works in Salmon Eye feature a unique marriage of Martinez’s gifts as a draftsman and a painter. Many of the paintings in the exhibition originated as small, sharpie drawings on paper. Bold and muscular brushstrokes contrast with the faint lines of a spray can and the rich texture of paint squeezed directly from the tube to the canvas. Synthesizing classical formal compositions such as the still-life, portrait and landscape with the speed and ‘stream of consciousness’ approach of a child’s hand, Martinez arrives at a style unmistakably his own.
