In his minimalist paintings, each concentrated on a single color, Jason Martin focuses on the materiality and the relief-like traces of his multi-layered paint application. It is not about the representation of a motif, an emotion or opening up for possible associations, but rather the elevation, the celebration of color and materiality. In an elaborate process, the artist first applies large amounts of impasto oil or acrylic gels to image carriers made of aluminum, stainless steel or plexiglass. He then processes the applied paint with specially made brushes and tools. Canvases don‘t exist in Martin's oeuvre, because the sheer material load exceeds the capacity of any conventional image carrier.
With their special aesthetics, the haptically appealing, sensual works by Jason Martin can be easily classified somewhere between sculpture and painting. While the applied paint in other works piles up into lively color spirals and curls or swirls in elegant, dynamic strokes, the artist creates a particularly precise, shimmering work here. The color is like a large wave of liquid gold rhythmically combed across the image carrier. By succeeding in creating ever new, spectacular refractions and reflections with the finely grooved surface texture of the shiny, almost translucent color mixture in different light situations, Martin once again showcases his masterly control of the material.

Ever since the highly acclaimed exhibition "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection" at the London Royal Academy of Art and at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 1997, the artist has attracted greater international attention. Today Jason Martin is one of the most famous European representatives of contemporary abstract painting. His works are in important international collections, among them the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, the collection Essl/Albertina and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection in Vienna, the Würth Collection, Künzelsau, and the Sprengel Museum, Hanover. [CH]