Akimblog
November 12, 2008
by Stephanie Vegh

Martin Pearce’s solo exhibition at transit gallery, In the Time of Earthquakes, is named for both a 1468 Francesco di Giorgio Martini painting and Pearce’s landscapes derived from that source, which deftly translate something of the early Renaissance’s murky ambitions into heavily painted surfaces that rupture like fissures in the earth. His project reaches its climax in the sprawling canvases of show title’s diptych. The physical space between the two parts acts as a heavily charged rift in the image. The intensity of the work’s centre is activated by the raw lack of finish at the distant corners of Pearce’s earth, these unfinished passages carry the weight of foreground and background and evoke a sense of encroaching space.

Pearce’s central epic is accompanied by a great many paintings titled as studies, some of which are exactly that: evidence of a process shrunk to an attractive scale. Others do transcend themselves, such as the refreshingly minimal iterations of Study IV and Study V with their enamel-like quality of blue miniatures and three encaustic works on paper (In the Time of Earthquakes Storm) that manage to encapsulate the terms of the exhibition as a whole through the sheer prima materia of pigmented grit and gobs of wax. Being both fiercely raw and cleanly contained, these are highly convincing depictions of land at its most primordial and its most contemporary.

Stephanie Vegh is a Hamilton-based artist and writer whose criticism has appeared in Scotland’s Map Magazine and various UK exhibition publications. She currently lives in Hamilton and serves on the Programming Committee for Hamilton Artists Inc.