Martin Basher Birds of Paradise, 2022, Anat Ebgi, Installation view
About
Martin Basher’s painting and sculptural work is situated in the lineage of display-based artistic practices. Working with the languages of retail and advertising, Basher explores the emotional charge of common objects and images. From his trademark paintings of gradated stripes and photo-real beaches to sculptural installations serving as displays for consumer goods, Basher activates spaces of sublimated psychological desire, at once familiar and strange for the altered retail scenarios they present. In these complex displays, Basher invokes unspoken drives, and the mundane and exclusive, the highbrow and lowbrow, and the public and private impulses that inform us as consuming individuals.
Martin Basher (b. 1979, Wellington, New Zealand) holds a BA (2003) and MFA (2008) from Columbia University in New York and a DocFA (2018) from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Basher’s work has been shown internationally at galleries and public institutions including the University of Connecticut; Art In General; Auckland Art Gallery; and Starkwhite, Auckland; Brand New Gallery; and The Public Art Fund. Basher lives and works in New York City.
The exhibition features a collection of still life paintings with highly stylized arrangements of Birds of Paradise flowers and abstract botanicals. — Julia Smith
“Strawberry Coconut Cream Pie” revisits Martin Basher’s ongoing conversation on the sublimated desires intertwined with consumer display. — Pearl Fontaine
The artist’s now-trademark panels, their vertical stripes standardized at uniform intervals, circled the walls of the two rooms, effecting an environment of superfluity—albeit an excess undercut by the differences between the compositions. —Suzanne Hudson
