Bio
Chase Martin is a multidisciplinary artist whose focus in painting explores ways of integrating digital aesthetics into the material, painted image.
In 2019, Chase exhibited a series of large scale pencil crayon drawings for his first solo show, Off my Fridge. In 2020, he participated in Wall to Wall: Mural and Cultural Festival, producing a mural for Wannabe’s Diner. In 2021, he presented a collection of paintings for his solo exhibition, is a bird is a plane is a man at La Maison des Artistes. In 2023, his followup show, Green Green Grass offered a series of new paintings alongside a durational performance piece completed on the evening of Nuit Blanche.
Chase received his Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honours from the University of Manitoba in 2021. He works as an install technician for La Maison des Artistes Galerie. With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Winnipeg Arts Council, Chase is currently developing a new body of work from his studio in Winnipeg’s Exchange District on Treaty One Territory.
Artist Statement
My painting practice is concerned with integrating digital aesthetics into the material painted image. Similar to the emergence of photography, digital technologies have presented itself as a potential existential threat to painting. Rather than resisting, my practice aims at guiding painting through a transitional period as it absorbs the processes and visual languages of digital technologies. The hand painted surfaces assemble a variety of motifs as if they were embedded in layers of a Photoshop collage. Imagery appears to float directly above or below the surface plane, creating a shallow surface space.
The core of my practice is a form that I include in my paintings named, the Ideal Line. The Ideal Line is modelled after the digital lines produced by digital paintbrush tools found in programs such as Snapchat and Microsoft Paint. I believe these digital lines were programmed to exist as lines in their ideal form. Their width and saturation are unwavering, and their ends finish in perfect semi-circles. The human inconsistencies of the hand drawn line have been amended by digital code.
My material practice has appropriated the ideal characteristics of these digital lines by translating them back into material marks on the painting surface, in a form that I call the Ideal Line. If we are to consider the Ideal Line as an idealized form, it follows that anything rendered using the Ideal Line also exists in an idealized form. When I paint a horse using the Ideal Line, I am painting an idealized version of a horse. My practice challenges the common characteristics that are typically associated with the average person’s ideal concepts, by presenting an alternative set of idealized concepts that have been filtered through digital aesthetics.
As I continue to work with the Ideal Line it has naturally evolved in my painting practice. Early versions of the Ideal Line appear nearly identical to digital lines. More recent applications see familiar motifs such as realistic clouds and realistic horse legs conform to the shape of the Ideal Line. For a time my practice was dependent on faithfully copying the unique intricacies of digital aesthetics directly from the screen. Nowadays, my process has shifted so that producing these digital mannerisms has become second nature to my hand. This arose out of necessity given that recent chronic migraines have left me unable to look at a digital screen. My body has become a pseudo-computer of sorts, mechanically generating images that appear digital in origin.
For purchase inquires please contact chaserileymartin@gmail.com
Chase Martin is a multidisciplinary artist whose focus in painting explores ways of integrating digital aesthetics into the material, painted image.
In 2019, Chase exhibited a series of large scale pencil crayon drawings for his first solo show, Off my Fridge. In 2020, he participated in Wall to Wall: Mural and Cultural Festival, producing a mural for Wannabe’s Diner. In 2021, he presented a collection of paintings for his solo exhibition, is a bird is a plane is a man at La Maison des Artistes. In 2023, his followup show, Green Green Grass offered a series of new paintings alongside a durational performance piece completed on the evening of Nuit Blanche.
Chase received his Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honours from the University of Manitoba in 2021. He works as an install technician for La Maison des Artistes Galerie. With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Winnipeg Arts Council, Chase is currently developing a new body of work from his studio in Winnipeg’s Exchange District on Treaty One Territory.
Artist Statement
My painting practice is concerned with integrating digital aesthetics into the material painted image. Similar to the emergence of photography, digital technologies have presented itself as a potential existential threat to painting. Rather than resisting, my practice aims at guiding painting through a transitional period as it absorbs the processes and visual languages of digital technologies. The hand painted surfaces assemble a variety of motifs as if they were embedded in layers of a Photoshop collage. Imagery appears to float directly above or below the surface plane, creating a shallow surface space.
The core of my practice is a form that I include in my paintings named, the Ideal Line. The Ideal Line is modelled after the digital lines produced by digital paintbrush tools found in programs such as Snapchat and Microsoft Paint. I believe these digital lines were programmed to exist as lines in their ideal form. Their width and saturation are unwavering, and their ends finish in perfect semi-circles. The human inconsistencies of the hand drawn line have been amended by digital code.
My material practice has appropriated the ideal characteristics of these digital lines by translating them back into material marks on the painting surface, in a form that I call the Ideal Line. If we are to consider the Ideal Line as an idealized form, it follows that anything rendered using the Ideal Line also exists in an idealized form. When I paint a horse using the Ideal Line, I am painting an idealized version of a horse. My practice challenges the common characteristics that are typically associated with the average person’s ideal concepts, by presenting an alternative set of idealized concepts that have been filtered through digital aesthetics.
As I continue to work with the Ideal Line it has naturally evolved in my painting practice. Early versions of the Ideal Line appear nearly identical to digital lines. More recent applications see familiar motifs such as realistic clouds and realistic horse legs conform to the shape of the Ideal Line. For a time my practice was dependent on faithfully copying the unique intricacies of digital aesthetics directly from the screen. Nowadays, my process has shifted so that producing these digital mannerisms has become second nature to my hand. This arose out of necessity given that recent chronic migraines have left me unable to look at a digital screen. My body has become a pseudo-computer of sorts, mechanically generating images that appear digital in origin.
For purchase inquires please contact chaserileymartin@gmail.com