Nomader by Eddie Martinez: San Marino pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Venice, Italy
April 20 – November 24, 2024

The Republic of San Marino participates in the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with the project Nomader by Eddie Martinez, curated by Alison M. Gingeras. On display, a new body of works by the American artist, conceived specifically for La Fucina del Futuro (Calle San Lorenzo 5063B, Castello), the venue of the Pavilion in continuity with the Biennale Architettura 2023.

The world’s oldest republic, San Marino has often looked to foreign artists for its national participation in La Biennale di Venezia. The choice pays homage to the country’s history as a place of hospitality and refuge and to its present as an important tourist center and university seat of international renown, known for being open and welcoming. The biography and conceptual underpinnings of Eddie Martinez’s work relate to the multiplicity of meanings suggested by the title Strangers Everywhere, the theme proposed by Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the Biennale Arte 2024. Martinez was marked by an itinerant childhood, lacking conventional stability. During his peripatetic coming-of-age period, Martinez moved back and forth between opposite regions of the United States, bouncing from coast to coast, sometimes being uprooted more than once a year. Martinez’s magpie style of appropriating fragments of imagery and themes emanates from his nomadic background. Traces of the different landscapes traversed during his youth occasionally appear in his iconography, which includes fragments of images from a nomadic life, revisited and transformed from work to work. Martinez felt perpetually foreign, regardless of where he lived, until he put down roots in Brooklyn as an adult.

Drawing was the element that gave Martinez continuity throughout his life, having begun his practice at a young age. Even when he was constantly traveling, portable materials allowed him to invest in drawing as a core practice, which has been the backbone of his work ever since. Drawing provided Martinez with a sense of home, giving him comfort and allowing him to explore his imagination; in turn, drawing became the generative engine of his painting and sculptural practices.

The title Nomader summarizes Martinez’s relationship with forms and ideas, moving from drawing to sculpture and painting, from figuration to abstraction and vice versa. This neologism suggests both the theme of nomadism, both physical and cultural and a phonetic play on the American pronunciation that sounds like “no matter.” Both meanings resonate with the artist’s work and his imagery.

“I am honoured”, says Eddie Martinez, “to represent the Republic of San Marino at La Biennale, and I am grateful to the team at FR Istituto d’Arte Contemporanea S.p.a. who have organized the pavilion and chosen an artist beyond their borders to represent them on the world stage. I am also thankful to Alison Gingeras for her continued collaboration and her fearless interrogation of painting and its possibilities.

This project is the result of a decade-plus journey conceived specifically for the spaces of La Fucina del Futuro, a former factory workshop in the heart of the Castello district, the installation conceived by Eddie Martinez and Alison M. Gingeras intends to give the viewer full access to the artist’s creative process. In the first room, a trapezoidal table will be set up with a wide selection of drawings and some bronze sculptures, which the artist made by assembling various discarded materials found on the beach of Long Island. Surrounding the table will be a selection of paintings created especially for the San Marino Pavilion. The installation of the paintings will then continue in the second room. Both sculptures and drawings are an integral part of the migratory conceptual and formal processes Martinez undergoes to produce his large-scale paintings.

more. www.biennaleveneziasanmarino.com