KRIS MARTIN

For his solo exhibition in the Nave of St. Agnes, GOOD LUCK, Kris Martin has taken this early work of sculptural abstraction and turned it on its head, literally. In a reversal of roles, the erstwhile sphere now sits on the firmament, supporting the cube as it balances precariously above it. What is to be made of this inversion of the structural logic of Goethe’s monument, which was first planned as a tribute to Goethe’s unrequited love, Charlotte von Stein? In a concrete sense, Martin’s sculpture is the product of a revolution, flipping the world as it is, or once was, around, putting the very logic of a straightforward composition into perpetual doubt, disbelief. Such phenomena can only exist, as it were, as sculptures, for in nature, the stasis that Martin achieves is scientifically untenable. And yet, there it is, an object of pure impossibility, balancing inside of the massive central nave of the former Brutalist church. Seeing, it seems, is not necessarily believing. This gesture is not just an inversion of a prior type, it is also a fundamental rethinking of the sculptural object post minimalism, with its endless search for a transparency of work and experience. In this sense, Martin has managed to craft a purely conceptual work, not as document or linguistic interjection, but as a proposition in material terms. The world on its head, not new or imagined otherwise, just upside down, and with that, an invitation to rethink all that is taken for granted when a monument is encountered.