“Remembering things past”; 2013.
Opening today and marking the inauguration of its new space in Berlin Schöneberg, Artefact.Berlin unveils Remember That Time, a solo presentation of paintings by American artist Gunars Martinsons. The first in a series of exhibitions dedicated to art and design, the exhibition is an autobiographical dive into the artist’s journey through life, from memories from his childhood to a more mature reflection on existence, nourished by his dense geometric vocabulary and the emotional ties thereof.
Founded in 2021 by cultural entrepreneur and longstanding collector Anna Rosa Thomae, Artefact.Berlin is a new gallery space prefiguring itself as an extension and complement to Thomae’s already reputed international cultural communications agency A R T Communication + Brand Consultancy, established in 2014. Through a series of curated art and design exhibitions, the project is rooted in Thomae’s ongoing commitment to supporting, presenting, and promoting art, design, and architecture as intrinsically connected disciplines, all the while pursuing her investigation into the manifold means to expand the horizons of understanding and fruition of art, and culture, as both concept and object.
The name of the gallery itself, artefact, is the entry point into the vision behind it. Derived from the Latin terms arte, or with skill, and factum, thing made or object, it acts as bridge between two worlds: the craft and the object, the way of making and the tangible iteration – ultimately, the elemental bond between the art and the design.
“Youth with turquoise table”; 1992.
Remember That Time, on view through February 25, 2022, is Martinsons’s first exhibition in Berlin – an extensive presentation of large-scale paintings that depict the artist’s autobiographical, emotive and time-imbued journey through life, from the memories of his childhood to a more mature reflection on time, focusing on geometric compositions made of structural elements of architectural matrix.
At once figurative and abstract, the recurring motifs that compose his works call to a past time, most markedly that of the artist’s childhood, observing his father at work. In fact, the paintings are a tribute to Martinsons’ father, an architect whom he adored and admired, ultimately cultivating the artist’s own fascination with the discipline, and which can be traced in the structures that loom large in his imagery and rise in the colorful geometries of the glimpsed or imaginary buildings and constructions that inhabit his works.
“Things that happen on the way home”; 2014.
Martinsons looks back to his paternal sources of inspiration. “As a child, I would spend hours nosing around in my father’s studio, looking at the rolls of blueprints spread on tables, unfolding what, to my young eyes, appeared as wonderful abstractions of lines, squiggles, and shapes of all sizes and forms,” he says. “I loved sitting at the drafting tables, in those days with no computers and cad systems to do the drawings. In my work, I retreat to the eye of that child – to this magical world to play with and explore – rendering the many stories concealed behind these architectural lines, long perpetuated in my mind.”
The canvases stand as broad geometrical yet free-flowing architectural expanses, inviting viewers to imagine the individuals that inhabit these constructions, to create the experiences that fill them, to tell the memories that inhabit them. A fitting reflection of Artefact.Berlin’s spirit, this first exhibition leads the way for a contemplation on past and future, on time as it nourishes both space and object – an homage to all things remembered and loved.
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