About

ART PRACTICE

Martin explores unprecedented connections between identity art and significant formalistic movements. Patchwork blankets, textile objects, costumes, performances and videos are a reference to the canon of female artists. The featured materials, such as wax, latex and pvc (from inflatable sex-dolls), are intrinsically meaningful since they resemble human skin. However, Martin succeeds to frame these signfier, narratives and concepts in a formal way, giving her work aesthetic strength and intellectual openness. The composition of Martin’s oeuvre, and that extends through all media, targets at a suspension which emerges from repetitive structure, the play of substitutions, classifications and reversals. She artificially creates difference by means of the repetition of quasi-identical elements.

Martin’s synthetic method of patching and composing is necessarily preceded by the act of dissecting, disassembling and melting down. The new arranged objects are rough, display a violent needlework and visualise her personal struggle with the material. Here we find the originality of her works; it is Martin’s artistic manner which unifies the aesthetic of vulnerability and discomfort, with formal qualities and decorative beauty. Martin’s biography entails traumatic moments of loss and mourning and her play with the concept of pain is variably implicit in her work. Language of pain is most often a language of complaint and bereavement, but, like in this case, it can also be the language of carefully measured gestures as artistic mannerism.

Reviews

THEORY

K. D. Martin is used to move between academic work and artistic practice, she understands possibilities and limitations which come with disciplinary boundaries. Martin studied fine art, pedagogy and aesthetics and she is currently a PhD candidate in philosophical aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Germany. (Supervisor Prof. Dr. Marc Rölli) Martin teaches since 2015 moving image theory at AKI Academy of Art and Design Enschede, affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem. She was Associated Member at the Cluster of Excellence, Interdisciplinary Laboratory - Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin between 2015-2019.

Her current research gravitates around the concept of milieu as epistemological model for the inquiry of digital technology. Her main research interest are philosophy of technique and philosophy of nature. Martin published several articles and co-edited a volume on the body in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault in 2017.

LIFE AND EDUCATION

Katharina D. Martin is born in 1971 in Braunschweig West-Germany. Her father, Dieter Martin, was a captain in the German army and died in 1978 in a helicopter accident. Martin left Germany in the age of 18 and went to Los Angeles where she worked as stripper. (1989-1991). In 1994 she gave birth to her son Jean-Luc Martin. Mother and son had a car accident in 1999 in which Jean-Luc Martin died. During her social pedagogy study, she worked as varieté acrobat and performer. (1997-2000).

  • PhD candidate for philosophical aesthetics at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Fine Arts) Leipzig supervised by Prof. Dr. Marc Rölli (Since 2017)
  • Lecturer for Philosophy and Image Theory in the study programme 'Moving Image' at AKI ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem/NL (Since 2015)
  • Associated Member at the Cluster of Excellence, Interdisciplinary Laboratory Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2015-2019)
  • PhD student Department of Aesthetics and Art Sciences, Academy of Fine Arts Münster supervised by Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle (2014-2017)
  • Dipl. Fine Arts, Film and New Media, Academy Fine Arts Münster/DE (2013)
  • Meisterschüler of Prof. Andreas Köpnick, Academy Fine Arts Münster/DE (2011-2012)
  • MA Project Participant, Piet Zwart Institute for Postgraduate studies, Rotterdam/NL (2007)
  • BA Monumental & Media Art, AKI ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem/NL (2006)
  • Dipl. Soz.Päd. University of Applied Sciences Münster/DE (2003)

ART RESIDENCIES

  • International Studio & Curatorial Program ISCP, New York/US (2012)
  • Artist Residence at the (Robert Wilson) Watermill Center, Water Mill Southampton (2009)

EXHIBITIONS (selection)

  • Patch Dynamics solo show at gallery JOEY RAMONE Rotterdam (2019)
  • All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings at RAM foundation Rotterdam/NL (2014)
  • Girls rule the world at Torch gallery Amsterdam/NL (2013)
  • International Contemporary Art Festival RE-culture 1 Patras/GR (2012)
  • She Devil Video exhibition at the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome/IT (2011)
  • Skin-deep at Galerie IRIS CORNELIS, Rotterdam/NL (solo 2011)
  • Performance Studies at Watermill Brooklyn Gallery, New York/US (2009)
  • The Seamstress at Het Torentje, Almelo/NL (solo 2006)
  • Positioning System at MAMA Showroom for Media and Moving Art Rotterdam/NL (2006)
  • Kunst in unserer Region at Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst/DE (2005)

SEMINARS (selection)

  • Martin, Katharina D. (SS 2017): (Hi)story of Moving Image (Film Forms: Expressions, Surrealism, Realism and Dialectics), context module, BA Design Course Moving Image, ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem.
  • Martin, Katharina D. (SS 2017): Society and Control (Michel Foucault/Gilles Deleuze), philosophy module BA Design Moving Image, ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem.
  • Martin, Katharina D. (WS 2017/18): Human, Machine, Cyborg. (Lewis Mumford/Pierre Clastres/Gilles Deleuze/Donna Haraway) philosophy module, BA Design Moving Image, ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem.
  • Martin, Katharina D. (WS 2017/18): Image Theory (On Signs, Affects and Rhythm) philosophy module, BA Design Moving Image, ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design Enschede affiliated with ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem.
  • Drews A-C., Martin K.D. (WS 2013/14) Körper im Werk von Gilles Deleuze und Michel Foucault Hauptseminar at Academy of Fine Art Münster.