ENERGY RAY

Francesca Marti' - Energy Ray opens on June 28, 2019 at Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, her third solo exhibition with the gallery since 2013. It features two distinct series of works. The first section is dedicated to unseen paintings from the mid-1990s depicting the cycle of life in the hills near the town of Soller in the north of the Tramuntana mountain range. Meanwhile the main spaces of the gallery show recent sculptures, installations and photographs from Marti's Believers series, in which human figures can be seen migrating through cities, gathered together in crowds or standing alone. In Marti's work, the human silhouette always adds a spark of new hope.
This show runs through mid-September, 2019. It continues several humanist themes first presented in 2017 at Marti's Transformation retrospective at the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia and precedes her monumental double solo show with artist Xiao Hui Wang at the Zhuzhong Art Museum in Beijing in April 2020.
Francesca Marti's large-scale solo show in Palma features a series of previously unseen paintings completed in the mid-1990s, based on the theme of regeneration. These canvases and works on paper were inspired by the wild-fires that raged in the hills around Soller in 1992. Marti' depicted the scorched earth, dried creeks, burnt olive trees and dead animals, as well as the gradual process of Mother Nature coming back to life in the aftermath of the dramatic destruction. This return to vitality has been a recurring theme in Marti's work.
After they were completed, some of these paintings were exhibited in Marti's Ombra en la Cendra solo show at the Casal Solleric in Palma in 1997, then they were then set aside by the artist when she began her research into new pictorial techniques, which resulted in her photographs, collages and videos from The Fly series. Now, after two decades being hidden in her studio, these paintings have been re-framed and re-proposed as part of her current exhibition in Palma, revealing how Marti's exploration of colours, subjects and techniques continue to evolve. The burnt branches and dead animals in these works have also reappeared in different ways in Marti's previous exhibitions at Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma, at Droplet (2013) and Kingfisher (2017). These paintings are like a phoenix re-emerging from the ashes. Marti has also created a striking new installation from the wood from ancient olive trees burnt by the same wild-fires more than two decades ago, entwined with red led-lights glowing like embers.
Alongside her more classical oil paintings, Marti' will be exhibiting brand new installations and her most recent Believers mixed media works. Figures travel in groups against backdrops of urban landscapes in Madrid, New York, Stockholm and Shanghai. Sometimes they seem to be escaping persecution, or celebrating new horizons. Other works feature the enlarged faces of anonymous mannequins, with surreal chains of figures walking in single file across their physiognomical features.
"The life-like figures of the mannequins are without a soul, but they are given new spirit by the energetic Believers walking across the topography of their faces, just like the fly who first walked across the faces of my living models in The Fly series," said the artist. "They are like explorers discovering new lands."
Marti's recent work poses questions for mankind about what it means to be a human today, including aspects of migration, communication, social responsibility and how we express the divide between the traveller and the refugee. The exhibition includes Marti's central Energy Ray installation, a series of lightning bolts painted in the courtyard space of the gallery, a life-sized sculpture of a Believer in glowing, burnt orange and different groups of figures assembled in processions, crowds and congregations. A large satellite dish forms the core of her Chaos installation, with photographs printed on zinc depicting life in the city, and incorporating videos of people in mass movement.
As always, Marti's work focuses on the human dynamic. Her artworks analyse human behaviour, whenever crowds of people are gathered together at political demonstrations, religious rites, border controls, commuting to work or even as a squadron of fans at a sporting event.