Mauro C. Martinez

Each painting mimics the style of photography typically used for tennis matches. Emphasising enhanced shadows, stark lighting and the use of a bird’s eye perspective, Martinez pictures each athlete frozen in the middle of a crucial moment. Colour schemes are active and vibrant, mirroring the physical nature of the sport itself while contrasting the potential violence of the subject matter. In this sense, Martinez is perhaps more interested in the aesthetics of tennis photography than in the sport itself, as his palette contrasts his last two solo exhibitions, which centred on neutral interiors with little to no outside intervention. Martinez employs digital tools to enlarge and crop his compositions at will. The expanded fields of vision accentuate the lack of opponent and crowd, highlighting the intensity of the individual competition taking place. While each painting recalls the hyperrealism of sports photography, Martinez imbues each painting with reminders of the artist’s hand. Abstraction encroaches onto these artworks as the crisp and refined details of photography are blurred through the use of fluid and loose brushwork.

In addition to ideas of sport and competition, Practice Makes Purrfect is framed by Hannah Wohl’s Bound by Creativity, a sociological study of the contemporary art market and the artistic series. For Martinez, artistic practice has always been a refuge, but the realities of the larger art market can sometimes threaten the safety of this refuge. With this body of work, Martinez has chosen to return to a past series of artworks, a decision that could be seen as frustrating. Martinez has always defined his relationship to the artistic series as contentious. For him, a series of artworks that repeat the same theme can sometimes be limiting. However, Martinez also admits that he can be guilty of moving on too quickly, failing to sit with a subject long enough to explore its full potential. In Practice Makes Purrfect, the process of repetition becomes a way to delve deeper, to mine subject matters for more and to give them the continued attention that they perhaps previously deserved. As such, Practice Makes Purrfect becomes an experiment in discipline and iteration as Martinez returns to the past to learn something new.