Jason Martin

Best known for his monochromatic paintings, Jason Martin effects oscillations between sculpture and painting, with the vigour of action painting but a controlled hand. Born in Jersey, in the channel islands in 1970, the artist now lives and works between London and Portugal. Applied layers of oil or acrylic gel are dragged across hard surfaces such as aluminium, stainless steel or Plexiglas with a fine, comb-like piece of metal or board in one movement, often repeated many times.

Striations catch the light, their rhythmic textures suggestive of the ridges in a vinyl record, strands of wet hair, the grain of a feather and whose titles flirt with association (Comrade, Amphibian, Corinthian). Martin does away with paint altogether in his wall-mounted casts of copper, bronze and nickel, whose surfaces are unctuous but frozen. In pure pigment works, vivid colour is applied to moulded panels, whose baroque contortions appear like an extreme close-up of a painter's palette.