SIMON MARTIN
Name: Simon Martin
Age: 29
Birthplace: Vitry-sur-Seine, France
Home: Vitry-sur-Seine, France
Discipline: Painting
Couple devant un volet bleu, 2019, oil on canvas, courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, photo by Julie Coulon
How did you start making art?
I grew up in the suburbs of Paris in Vitry-sur-Seine. I have been attracted by painting since childhood. Before joining the Beaux-Arts in Paris, it took my parents quite a while to accept I wanted to become an artist. I got in, and started working with a small gallery quickly. I graduated in 2017 and I am now represented by Jousse Entreprise, where I did my first solo show in September last year.
What is the starting point for all your paintings?
The French suburb is the setting for all my work. I try to represent the mineral shades of this grey environment. The grey connects architectures with figures, and nature appears in the painting as a dandelion growing up in the pavement. Moreover, the place I live in is the house my grand-mother and mother used to occupy. It contains a succession of temporalities, an idea I try to convey through my paintings: thick layers pile-up, revealing the previous ones. Couples are my main subject. I often paint lovers as a single entity and try to create an emotional dimension.
How do you define your artistic search and practice in three words?
Layers, intimacy, textures.
How do you consider your work in relation to current societal issues?
Being queer means facing daily hostility. By showing male lovers in domestic situations, my pieces respond to daily aggression and attacks. This allows me to offer another vision of a suburban environment, as it is not an usual setting for such scenes. It is essential for me to create new types of representations by featuring gay couples within banal life moments.
What makes painting powerful in your opinion?
Painting has the capacity to combine human figures, architecture, memories and mythology, all on the same level. It is an unlimited fictional medium, which lets us see its construction and its evolution at once. I like the idea of sharing the ways in which the art is made, as it’s a way for me to share my doubts.
What are you trying to achieve through your work?
Usually, I start painting with no specific idea in mind. I usually find myself in a chaotic state. I then try to find some sort of peacefulness, inner calm, silence perhaps.
What does being an artist mean in your opinion today ?
Many stories have been forgotten or told the wrong way. Being an artist means restoring that balance and fill the missing gaps, paying tribute to the ones left in the margins, in order to achieve a more accurate representation of society.
What is the message you want to deliver with your work ?
I guess my images speak about brutality within our contemporary world, while at the same time offering refuge and rest within someone’s loving arms.