Xavier Martin

Simultaneously with Belgium is Not a Road there is an exhibition of the Brussels’ based painter Xavier Martin. Martin constructs paintings by means of opaque brush strokes and transparent layers of glacis. The absorbing and reflective qualities of paint are elaborated in a wide range of stylistic finesses: on canvases and supports of a usually reduced format, he creates alienating renditions of an atmospheric depth. Recently, he completed an extensive and impressive series of paintings in delicate nuances of white.

Blurring boundaries between volume and void, Martin’s paintings refer to the idea of the landscape as a reflection of a state of mind, with subdued hints towards existentialist thinking. Lars Kwakkenbos: But the landscape is always there, a landscape that always frees itself of this support. Getting past the support is the issue. (...) On one of the pages of a note-book he wrote in 1998, we already find the following words: Par delà tout, il y a cette fumée. (...) The main thing now is to look around in the paint.

P-08-Net-01 (200/120) huile/toil

Xavier Martin was a laureate of the 'Young Belgian Painters Award' in 2003. Since then, his work has been shown a.o. in Le Botanique in Brussels and in Le Centre d'art contemporain du Luxembourg Belge. In 2006 he was invited to show work in his homeland South Korea in the group exhibition Vanitas.