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Gallery Hijinks

May 5 - May 27, 2012

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2309 Bryant Street San Francisco, CA 94110
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Too Far Gone Painting by Martin Machdo
Opening: May 5th, 2012, 6-10pm Martin Machado premiers a new body of work titled, Too Far Gone, opening at Gallery Hijinks on May 5th, 2012. This collection explores the concepts of nostalgia and reality through the eyes of a lowly deckhand wandering the seas. While the focus of work continues Machado’s preference for painting on found objects, the show is anchored by a documentary style video that illustrates his recent six month journey living and working on a containership. This documentary becomes the jumping off point for the other pieces, each enriching the narrative while exploring the past and present of seafaring. The romanticism of a life at sea unveils the forgotten days of the great sailing ships that used to make up the Merchant Marine. But while the sailors desire for the unknown remains, the shipping industry has radically changed. Steel container ships, radar, and global positioning systems of present day have considerably tamed the voyage, but in its place solitude and disconnect have become the true dangers of life at sea. Martin spent six months at sea as a watch-standing deckhand on an international containership. The ship travelled back and forth from New York to Singapore, stopping at many ports in between, and eventually crossed the Pacific returning him to the San Francisco Bay. Spending eight of the twelve-hour workday on the bridge as a lookout, the artist’s mind had ample time to wander while staring at the horizon, far out to sea. These paintings are homage to the wanderers of the seas and the forefathers of the shipping industry. The artist continues to explore his craft, introducing figurative elements to the body of work and attempting glass etching for the first time. The materials, playing a large role themselves, highlight the artists ability to build upon the past life of found objects. In addition to working on found driftwood, several paintings were made upon nautical charts that were being discarded from the container ship. The charts, having been used recently, depict areas the ship had travelled and include markings made by the navigating officer. By mounting them to panel and covering them with a clear gesso, he was able to overlay painted imagery of the ships crew on the job. Machado recently completed a journey as part of The Clipperton Project, a voyage made up of international artists and scientists who sailed to a remote atoll in the Pacific. The project is a non-profit international initiative that aims to raise awareness of the environmental impact of human activities on some of the world’s most remote and uninhabited places. When not out at sea, Machado resides in San Francisco. He received his BFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has previously shown in Bazar de Arte, 5 Claude Lane, The Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Antelope Valley College, The Space Gallery, 111 Minna, and Swell Gallery.