Marten, Helen
Further images
Helen works across sculpture,
painting, and writing to create a body of work that questions the stability of
the material world and our place within it. Alluding to language, systems, and
intentionality, her work across all media sets out to imagine the miraculous
substructure beneath the veneer of our habitual lives.
In
her edition “Untitled,” a drawing collage that Marten
digitally decomposed into several basic colours and translated back
into a work of graphic art by lithographing one painted layer after another.
The analog technique endows each print with tiny irregularities and
fingerprints, painterly traces of the printing process that breathe the same
life into the figures that distinguishes the Turner Prize-winning artist’s
works. A central figure sits haloed and disembodied in the centre of the page,
his gaze fixed on a moment beyond the frame.
The figure inserts himself into the action,
breaching the theatre’s traditional fourth wall. Repetitive eyes and open
mouths, crudely sketched nudes, the debris of leaf and flower pressings and all
frame the scene and underscore its dramatic quality.
9-color lithograph on 300gsm
Somerset Satin Paper, 40 x 60 cm, edition: 100 + 20 A.P. , numbered and signed
on the back.