Remember That Time, on view from December 8 through February 25, 2022, is Hamburg-based American artist Gunars Martinsons’ 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.
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. 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.
Rooted in the Schöneberg district’s distinct architectural heritage, Artefact.Berlin will continuously connect with local art and design professionals and general audiences alike through a dense program of multidisciplinary events, talks, and performances, once again fostering Berlin’s extensive and widely diverse cultural community and its visibility worldwide.
