FIXED EXPLOSION
Inspired by the final explosion scene of Michelangelo Antonioni's famous film Zabriskie Point, Léonard Martin's eponymous suite, presented at the Templon gallery's Brussels space, reveals an upside-down universe evoking the constant flow of images in our world under the cloud's sway. Does it make us want to break free?

Scattered across the sky, the multicolored clothes of a wardrobe, the food from a refrigerator, a television, the books from a library… all filmed in slow motion against a backdrop of psychedelic music (by Pink Floyd): you have to revisit the mythical final scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s famous film Zabriskie Point, released in 1970, to appreciate Leonard Martin’s eponymous sequel.

A series of oil and acrylic paintings in vibrant colors, devoid of vanishing points—as is necessary to convey the impression of floating… “ Looking at the explosion of objects in Zabriskie Point is to question the repercussions and the wake left by the history of one generation on the next ,” explains the artist, born in 1991, a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Le Fresnoy, who, since his residency at the Villa Medici in 2019, has engaged in a dialogue between painting and cinema. “ What paths can we forge in the abandoned dreams of our elders? ” he asks, noting: “ I capture these objects on the fly. Where the film breaks off like a point of no return, my paintings imagine possible continuations. ”

SATURATION

What sequences can be imagined in this great disorder of signs where automaton-like figures move about (the multimedia artist, who practices painting, sculpture, and video simultaneously, creates puppets and automata intended to stage themes drawn from literature or art history)? Transposing the cloud of levitating objects from Antonioni's film onto the flat surface of the canvas, the Zabriskie Suite inevitably evokes, through the saturation of signs, "cthe constant flow of images, texts and sounds that now occupy our daily lives and sometimes blur our vision For Léonard Martin, in fact, Painting perhaps allows images to fall away, to make this "cloud" rain down.
which weighs above our heads ».

Recalling, through its plunging perspective, the emaki—those illuminated Chinese, Japanese, or Korean scrolls that foreshadowed cinema—his painting "prevents the gaze from becoming fixed." A fragmented aesthetic that puts our perception to the test. There is no rest here; we are in the maelstrom of history and memory. Indeed, the artist asks himself: " How do we piece together the fragments of a story? Where should we look and listen? My paintings don't provide a fixed point. They trace lines, from one memory to another, and seek to repopulate this desert over which Antonioni's lovers fly. "

LEONARD MARTIN – ZABRISKIE SUITE »
TEMPLON GALLERY
VEYDTSTRAAT 13A, BRUSSELS (BELGIUM)
UNTIL FEBRUARY 24, 2024
TEMPLON.COM