A huge selection of John Martini's sculpture and monoprints spanning several decades at the Custom House Museum offers viewers a rich opportunity to see the artist's work in depth. Martini's works - in spite of their heavy composition - manage to feel spontaneous and light-hearted, inviting us not to take them, or their creator, too seriously. Here, his merry characters, ranging from birds to lizards to human figures, include works of many dimensions, but the thread of whimsical ingenuity that is a trademark of this artist is clear. Along with his three-dimensional works is a fine group of new monotypes.
The galleries are filled with a wild array of creatures large and small; free-standing skeletons, birds, men in hats, naked women, dogs and even kiddy cars; "Bob's Buggy" of 2001 will make you smile. These steel sculptures, cut with a blowtorch, are often layered, incised and polychromed in bold primary colors. Many have wheels, arms, legs and other appendages that bring them to life.
Wall-hung works include "When You're a Jet," a fine horizontal "stage" piece with a full cast of dancing characters; joined in a theatrical chorus line spanning five feet, they cast striking shadows. Early works include several pieces from 1983: "Leo," "Papa Doc: He's Gone," "Rats" and "Broken Columns." Noteworthy is "Limbo" from 1991 and "Zulu" from 1986, featuring unusually strong colors that appear to be floating on the surfaces. Letters spelling Z U L U glow red as they protrude from blue water in which a flailing maiden appears to be drowning. Another stand out is "Guatamala," in which a siren is carried on a plinth by a small armada of men.
On the walls are monoprints from the 2008 "Custom House Series" that include an oft-recurring Martini image, a human head in profile with one eye inquisitively scanning the landscape. They feature bright colors in groups of two, four or six, laid over white, black and orange grounds. One print shows a man striding, his one-eyed profile intently looking down, with an animal running in the opposite direction in the print below it. Shown together, this coupling (and several others on view) gain from their pairing.
Martini says that "the immediacy of the monoprint process has allowed me to refine and enlarge my palette." While most monoprints here have strong colors, a group of three in the 2006 "Aube Twilight Series" offer darker images; doll-like figures in blacks and grays with red splotches on their chests or abdomens look wounded, injured, fragile. Are they victims of war? Virgins defiled? Martini recalls them as reflections on Goya, whose work he came to know more fully through Robert Hughes' book on the artist. They were created during a period when the horror of the Iraq war, sickness and death were omnipresent influences for the artist.
Martini splits his time between Key West and France. His Key West studio is a former movie theatre in Bahama Village (its interior is shown on the exhibition card). But the cultural divide between the two countries does not seem problematic. While his French and American ateliers are dramatically dissimilar, his works march happily through the years in tune to a drummer John Martini hears clearly.
"This show is like a home coming," he says, "because my first studio in 1978 was a few buildings down from the Custom House. I started my Key West years walking past the old Custom House almost daily."