Frieze London: Eddie Martinez: Studio Wall Redux

Timothy Taylor is delighted to return to Frieze London with a booth dedicated to the work of Eddie Martinez curated by Claire Gilman, Chief Curator of the Drawing Center in New York. The presentation builds on Martinez’s 2017 solo exhibition at the Drawing Center, for which he mounted large drawings and paintings over “wallpaper” composed of thousands of sketches pinned to the wall for a kaleidoscopic, floor-to-ceiling installation. The Frieze presentation coincides with Martinez’s third exhibition at Timothy Taylor’s London gallery, titled Enough (12 October – 18 November).

Martinez’s drawing practice is fully integrated into every aspect of his life. Since childhood he has always carried a sketchbook to capture fragments of the world around him. Martinez considers the pen to be an extension of his hand, and the pictorial space of the paper to be a realm where he can cede control, achieving loose, immediate marks and texts. “Drawing for me is nothing and everything at the same time,” he explains. “It’s not an act of effort… It’s just thinking for me, it’s thinking with a utensil.”

The walls of the artist’s studio in Ridgewood, New York City, are papered with an archive of drawings in various formats and media. This scene offers a constant source of inspiration for Martinez; he translates some drawings directly into paintings and larger works on paper. Across the work, we see recurring iterations of images, idioms, and themes that include art historical references, but also children’s toys, skulls, tennis balls, cartoonish figures, and flowers. For Frieze London, Martinez ushers his Studio Wall into Booth A14. Here, thousands of sketches are arranged on the booth walls, over which twenty framed works on paper also hang, salon style. Vivid and riotous, these framed works (completed in 2021–2022)—some so heavily painted that they are more reminiscent of his canvases—reveal Martinez’s deep processing of images culled from his diaristic drawings. With the work contextualized in this way, the viewer has unique access to the abundant connections among Martinez’s exuberant output.