Artist Spotlight: Jordan Martins
Discover artist Jordan Martins’ creative process, blending digital collage, painting, and themes of perception. Explore his 'Phenotypes' series and the influence of personal heritage on his evolving, layered approach to art.
Jordan Martins Artist Partner
INSIDE THE CREATIVE MIND
What does your creative process look like from start to finish? Can you walk us through the journey of a recent piece?
“My process is fairly sprawling in terms of the inputs and outputs, but for the last 6+ years it’s revolved around a kind of internal ecosystem where images and fragments from one area feed into another in a fairly circular fashion.
I have an ongoing series, “Phenotypes”, with collaged images created on a flatbed scanner which in turn are printed in single edition archival pigment prints. But I also print these images on canvases to serve as the starting point for all of my paintings, creating a kind of game to figure out the interplay between the printed and painted surface and how they read together.
Fragments and test prints from the Phenotypes series are also combined with various other ephemera in my studio–quick paintings on paper, photo studies, found materials, proofs–and used to create more traditional (gluing pieces of paper together) collage”.
What does a typical day look like for you? How do you balance your art with other aspects of your life?
“Right now I also teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and have a part-time job as the director of a multidisciplinary non-profit space called Comfort Station. So balancing all of that (in addition to being a husband and father) is always a fairly active dance.
I look for ways that these things can feed into each other, seek out small bursts of studio time if that’s all I can get, appreciate the myriad ways creativity can flow and build even when I’m not “making work”, think about ways to dismantle my own internalized capitalist pressures around productivity, and treat myself gently when I am not making as much art as I’d like.
I also try to go to the beach here in Chicago with my family as much as possible when the weather is warm (or cold, as we’re able to handle that).”
I’m broadly interested in the nature of perception and hallucination in the everyday experience of seeing the world, which has led me to learn more about things like camouflage, pattern recognition and Gestalt psychology .
What inspires your work? Are there particular themes, experiences, or artists that influence your art?
“I’m broadly interested in the nature of perception and hallucination in the everyday experience of seeing the world, which has led me to learn more about things like camouflage, pattern recognition and Gestalt psychology . Gestalt psychology as a field emerged essentially as an attempt to understand the conditions and factors of visual perception. It starts from the premise that visual perception is not a neutral “window” onto an outside world, but that all visual perception is directed and actually instinctually trying to find a form.
What we consider to be “normal” perception is actually a highly structured ongoing hallucination whereby certain information is filtered out to reduce things down, certain shorthand recognitions make it easier for a brain to see connections, gaps get filled in, figure/ground relationships become established, and much more. When I teach, I try to always remind my students that the same animal brain of ours that evolved to easily find food or avoid danger is also the one looking at a cellphone, McDonalds menu or a painting.
So I see my work mostly as a matter of creating surfaces that are conscious of those conditions of perception and wanting to actively engage a viewer in forming what is there”.
How has your art evolved over time? Are there any significant changes in your style or approach?
“My practice has in some sense revolved around a collage logic since my senior year of college 23 years ago, but within that it has shapeshifted a lot in terms of the materials and processes used. I’ve always had a predilection for chaotic compositions, and I think some of my favorite work recently occurs at the intersection of that impulse and a conscious effort to splash cold water on it for the sake of simplicity.
For around ten years I mostly made work embedding collage fragments in layers of resin to lock different layers into a single surface. I no longer use that process but the way I combine materials and images is very much indebted to that era of working”.
Is there a particular piece of art that holds special meaning to you? Why is it significant?
“There are countless works that have arrested me and that I come back to, but just to single out one: I stumbled across a Dutch still life painting at the National Gallery by Willem Van Aelst called “Stil Life with Dead Game” and it transfixed me in a way I’m still trying to unpack years later. It is masterful in that particular Dutch still life tradition’s ability to produce an indelible material presence of objects, but it is simultaneously SO abstract and enigmatic to me in the way the visual space is arranged and how the elements–a deer carcass, rooster, foul, and some kind of hunting sash?--hang together. Almost all of my collages are in some sense trying to make a version of this painting in a way I can’t explain in words”.
Can you share a personal story that significantly impacted your art or artistic journey?
“When I was preparing to apply to MFA programs, I was also suddenly becoming more interested in connecting with my Brazilian heritage. My father was born there, but aside from my grandfather I never knew any family there, had never visited, and didn’t speak Portuguese. I ended up learning Portuguese after my grandfather passed away and applied to MFA programs in Brazil, and I ended up studying and living in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil for over two years doing that. The city itself is a massive psychedelic-Baroque collage, which was the perfect backdrop to pull from while I was shaping my practice”.
