adjunct curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art
...As suggested in this and other previous works, a running theme of displacement, often humorous, also marks this years exhibition. One such project, John Martini's Stoop, places a short set of stairs and a mailbox in the vast open field of Fort Zachary. The contrast of scale and seeming inutility of the object seems abject, desolate, even tragic. Yet it is not the absence of the house to which the stairs and box belong that becomes the focus but rather, a recalibration of use---visitors are encouraged to leave notes and letters for the artist, who collects them regularly. Transforming decay and seeming discard into a site of exchange and connection might be an apt metaphor for many of the works in the show, and indeed the idea of transformation of space and experience is inherent to the overall mission of Sculpture Key West.
A simple collection of cement stair, a mailbox and a sidewalk suggest a missing house. Absence is presence. The artist prefers not to distort the relationship between work and the viewer with an explanation, relying instead on the work itself to say what needs to be said.
John Martini has had a solo show of his celebrated steel sculptures nearly every year for the past twenty years in Key West and Paris. Extremely prolific, widely collected, Martini is shown in no less than eight galleries around the world. In 2006 he was commissioned to create a work for Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, consisting of two 30' heads. He also participated in the Giants in the City Project for Art Basel Miami Beach 2008 in which one of his large heads was made into an inflatable sculpture. Martini lives in Key West, FL.