Martin Dull’s oeuvre is a backstage pass to a staged production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle seconds before curtain time; poised yet ready to pounce in the cavernous half-light appears a riot of gears and pulleys, clubbing giants, circles of fire, mythological shape-shifters, and at least one flying dragon.
Layering schizy interventions on found objects, for example alternating merciless swings of a homicidal sledgehammer with gingerly applied coats of jewel-toned paint gayed-up with pinches of glitter, Dull arrives at an alien ensemble of discrete works displaying all the logic, predictability and linear progression of a waking dream. Pulled every which way by complicated gestures that defy stasis, his sleepwalk occasionally halts to coalesce into almost free -standing sculptures teetering between precipitously protruding wall reliefs and later joined by neat rows of made-with-everything, letter-sized panels –the latter Cinderella-hour love notes competing for whatever and whomever is left.
Dull notes, “My work exists somewhere between object and imagination. Built over time, through deep material engagement, I aim to evoke a sense of narrative through conflation of different tropes. By commanding the visual languages of painting and sculpture, I offer a poetic and visceral environment for the viewer to explore. My goal is to connect, through making, with the deeper, unquantifiable elements that guide our human nature. ‘Flesh and Bone’ expands on this investigation. As the rudimentary building blocks of living things, our flesh and bone become the vehicles that contain who and what we are. Everything abstract about existence is supported and held by these visceral materials. This observation serves as metaphor and impetus for my engagement in, and creation of, the objects on display.”
Martin Dull is a New York based mixed media artist who studied at Pratt Institute, Marywood University, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture. He has been a recipient of several grants and residencies, most notably the 2015 Peter Rippon/Royal Academy European Travel Grant and a 2016 artist in residence at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation. In June 2021, Dull was selected by Fresh Air Montclair to create a public installation along Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, NJ. Dull has been a guest speaker and critic at several institutions including Pratt Institute, Hunter College and Fordham University, is co-founder of the curatorial collaborative JMN Artists, and works as an adjunct instructor at both Caldwell University, NJ, and Marywood University, PA. Dull’s artwork has been included in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States, most notably solo exhibitions with John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY in 2018, and M David & Co, Brooklyn, NY in 2019.
New York Artists Equity Association (aka Equity Gallery) is a donor-funded 501(c)3 founded in 1947 by a celebrated and radically diverse group of practitioners, among them Jacob Lawrence, his wife Gwendolyn Knight, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Paul Cadmus, and Louise Nevelson, to advance the professional aspirations of emerging artists from underserved communities.