The Deca-Dance of Mr. Ray
September 2023
Surface Gallery
The Deca-dance of Mr.Ray brings together artworks from the first decade of Martin’s career, unveiling for the first time the full range of his distinctive multi-layered work. The pieces on display register years of personal history and present day realities onto monumental canvases of resin, collage and paint. Subtly and lavishly, he uses the accoutrements of Hieronymus Bosch and the flavours of René Magritte to conjoin with the Golden Age of Hollywood.
These cinematic pieces are full with curious tapestries of mysterious characters, presented in a swirling panorama of tragedy and love. They are composed of torn and distorted figures, lasers, saints and saviours, wrestlers, ballerinas, villains, and movie stars. An artful composition that invites viewers to trace skeletal, exploding thoughts by means of dark drama, cryptic triptychs and futuristic sci-fi scenes, where creation and demise finally collide.
A distinctive feature of his style lies in his penchant for playful seriousness, where inscrutable personal history blends with the universal human experience: where beauty blooms across multiple lifetimes, rendering the on-going process of self-formation, not as a resolved matter, but an everlasting, decadent dance.
A new series of animatronic collage sculptures adorn this exhibition. With interactive artworks that are there to be explored, as well as a screening on the opening night of a documentary-length film about Martin’s practice, created over several years in collaboration with the filmmaker Tom Dennis.
“I’m delighted to showcase this latest decade of my artistic practice. In this time it’s evolved from 2D artworks in 2013 all the way into animatronic 3D sculptures in 2023. I am grateful to have met so many people along the way who have supported and inspired me. For the last few years I have been gradually building up a body of work in secret. Now it’s time to reveal it all and share it, in this latest exhibition: The Deca-dance of Mr.Ray”- Martin Rayment
