This recent body of work is a continuation of Martin Golland‘s engagement with invented architectural spaces. These paintings describe a fictional meeting point between built environments and the natural world. The paintings begin from a bricolage of abandoned photos, small drawings and collages which the artist uses as initial reference points, and which become the catalyst for further invention on the canvas. His work is created from a broad range of painterly languages that respond to the contradictory histories of representational painting. During the painting process, subjects such as the screen, frame, mirror, window and curtain are influenced by the physical properties of paint itself.

The mirror represents fractured light, fractured vision, and the confusion of distances. It is also a way to widen the scope of vision – to look behind us and in front at the same time, for example. In these paintings they function as the geometric punctuation within space that destabilizes vision. Golland reflects back upon the viewer the charge of energy they bring to the picture – a deflection of visual forces, as if calling the act of looking into question.

Paint gestures of drips, scrapes, and stains transform the subjects to reveal the trick of presence and of absence. The intent the final result of each painting is to blur the transition between the imagined and the real, between strangeness and reverie.

This exhibition is presented during the Extreme Painting event organized by the Contemporary Art Galleries Association – AGAC.