Tony Martin

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Biography:

Lived 1937-2021

Tony Martin has, since the 60's, created seminal new media works. As early as 1968, Howard Wise called his work "cybernetic" for the way he applied information processes. In his works "Well" and "Interaction Room," the electronic systems were the interface between the viewer and the event and process of the sculpture or installed environment. He created the electronic and optical configurations for these in his own studio, and when necessary, commissioned help from the new generation of engineers and scientists forging new ways and methods.
A painter from the outset, Martin has also devoted himself to using pure processes of light and simultaneous projected imagery in motion. The legendary visual compositions produced at the San Francisco Tape Music Center and Bill Graham's Fillmore West, stand as early testament to his love of "painting in time," and to his involvement with music from an early age. Exhibitions of his paintings at the Boreas and Batman Galleries coincided with the Fillmore light shows and Tape Music Center events. Martin has worked intensively with such composers as Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and David Tudor. Prime works that championed viewer interaction began in 1962 with Martin's first multisensory environmental piece, "Theater For Walkers, Talkers, Touchers." This was a commission by the Anna Halprin Dance Company for the San Francisco Museum Of Art. In these and current works Martin distributes variable thematic content through switching systems and optics activated by the viewers, principles of resonance and feedback are applied through photo and proximity electronics. In Martin's collaboration with David Tudor for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, all resonant information gathered from the dancers' movements, light events, and sound created a truly interdependent yet freely variable event. These concepts were dominant in his light system for the E.A.T. Pepsi Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka, Japan, and also in his groundbreaking vector image work shown at P.S. 1. during 1980. In sculptural works such as The Well, a 40" copper cylinder, viewers experience and influence light imagery both inside and above the "light well." Such signature works point to Martin's career-long attention to the inner life of the individual within the complex dynamics of our interwoven lives. Their resonance can be found in paintings that steadily emphasize opportunities for viewers to "look into rather than at."
In 1993, Martin helped co-found The Painting Center, with the aim of providing exhibition space to both emerging and mature painters pursuing different formal directions. His exhibitions of painting and drawing reveal Martin's characteristic synthesis of emotionality and thoughtfulness: open, receptive space coherent with high tension. The forms, texture, and light and dark originate in seeing. Recent exhibitions of the past five years include shows at the New York Studio School, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and galleries in The Netherlands.

Résumé:

SELECTED SOLO / TWO PERSON / GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019 - Electronic Arts Intermix / Emily Harvey Foundation
          50th Anniversary ~ viewer-activated works ~ Howard Wise Gallery, 1968 and 1969;
          ephemera 1961 ~ 2015 
          www.eai.org/supporting-documents/991
2019 - Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland
          Discoteca Analitica (group)
2018 - Hillstrom Museum of Art, St. Peter, MN
          Tony Martin: Recent Paintings (solo)
2018 - National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
          Experiments in Art and Technology (group)
2017 - Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
          Body Language: Figuration in Modern andContemporary Art (group )
2016 - Pulse Contemporary Art Fair, Miami Beach : Solway Gallery Booth
2015 - 2018 - Walker Art Center / Cranbrook Museum Of Art/
                     Berkeley Museum of Art - Hippie Modernism:
                     The Struggle For Utopia (group)
2015 - Museum der Moderne Salzburg - E.A.T. Retrospective
2015 - Whitney Museum, NYC, NY - Unification / Links
          collaboration with David Rosenboom - May 24th
2015 - Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY - En Masse II
2014 - Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY
          As Above So Below (group)
2013 - Art 101, Brooklyn, NY- Inscaping - paintings, works on
          paper with Margot Farrington collages (two person)
2013 - Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY – Floorlamps /
          Light Marks Converse / Proximity - November 21st
2011 - 2012 -The Clocktower, NYC - Rondeau
          with Margot Farrington - room installation: multiple
          video, projection, soundtrack, scrim and reflection
2011 - Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY - The Well
          (works from the permanent collection)
2010 - The Boiler, Brooklyn, NY, Shadows (group)
2006 - Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College, NY and Shanghai,
           China - To Shanghai And Back (group)
2005 - Sawhill Gallery, James Madison University, VA -
           Galaxy (solo)
2005 - National Academy Museum, NYC, NY -
           179th Annual Invitational Exhibition
2005 - Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH - Permanent Collection - 
           The Door, a viewer interactive light sculpture
2003 - Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY - Visual Poetry In Light In Time (solo)
2002 - 2006 - Studio 18, NYC - group shows
2001 - New York Studio School, NYC, NY - Painting:
           Abstraction II (group)
2001 - Palm Beach Institute Of Contemporary Art, FL -
           Brooklyn! (group)
2000 - LACMA - San Francisco Tape Center Retrospective
2000 - 2014 - Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn, NY (group)
2000 - Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (group)
1998 - Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ - Tony Martin: Paintings
1997 - Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY/ Gasworks, London/
          The Corner House, Manchester, England - Works from
          the Pierogi Gallery Flat Files (group)
1996 - Myung Sook Lee Gallery, NYC - November to November:
          A Year Of Painting (solo)
1994 - The Painting Center NYC -Tony Martin: Paintings
1991 - Scott Alan Gallery, NYC - Tony Martin
1990 - Scott Alan Gallery, NYC -Tony Martin: Works On Paper
1986 - Brooklyn Museum of Art - Brooklyn ’86 (group)
1986 - University of Shanghai, China
          Approaches To Abstraction (group)
1983 - Institute For Art & Urban Resources, PS I NY (group)
1980 - Institute For Art & Urban Resources, PS I NY (solo)
1978 - Huntsville Museum Of Art, Huntsville, AL
          Art of the Space Age (group)
1977 - Art Institute Of Chicago – Centennial Exhibition (group)
1977 - Max Protetch Gallery, Washington, DC (group)
1974 - Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (group)
1970 - Howard Wise Gallery (group)
1969 - Howard Wise Gallery (solo)
1968 - Howard Wise Gallery, NYC, NY (solo)
1968 - Milwaukee Arts Center, WI -The Game Room (solo)
1965 - Batman Gallery, San Francisco, CA - (solo)
1962 - SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA - Theater For Walkers,
          Talkers, Touchers – multisensory environmental piece
 

Permanent Collections

Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
Fales Library NYU, New York, NY
Hillstrom Museum, St Peter, Minn.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT
Queensboro Museum of Art, Queens, NY
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
University of Indiana Art Museum, Bloomington, IN