Per Mårtensson

New Paintings
October 19 – November 30

Interior of a modern art gallery featuring the works of Per Mårtensson, with white walls displaying framed artwork, a blue bench in the center, and a gray carpeted floor. The gallery is well-lit and features a linear layout.
A modern art gallery corridor with white walls and a row of framed artworks, and dark wooden floor. The name "Per Mårtensson" is projected onto the wall in large letters.
A minimalist art gallery wall with two small square niches displaying tiny framed artworks, beside text on the wall reading "Per Mårtensson".
Interior of an empty gallery with a long hallway featuring a plain white wall on which five small framed pictures by Per Mårtensson are evenly spaced. Natural light streams in from windows at the far end.
A spacious room designed by Per Mårtensson, with white walls featuring three square windows symmetrically spaced along the wall. The floor is covered with gray carpet.
Three small square recesses in a plain white wall, each containing a different geometric sculpture element by Per Mårtensson, displayed in an evenly spaced row.
Six small square canvases by Per Mårtensson, each in graduated shades from dark to light, are evenly spaced along a white gallery wall above a dark floor.
A minimalist gallery wall displays four small, evenly spaced, rectangular artworks. "Per Mårtensson" is written in simple text on an adjacent blank wall to the left, complementing the modern setting's clean and uncluttered design.

Press Release

Richard Levy Gallery is pleased to present a selection of new paintings by Swedish artist, Per Mårtensson. At the intersection of minimalism and conceptualism, these artworks present viewers with a reference for the very setting in which they are viewing them, the gallery.

Per Mårtensson starts with a concept of a painting, which is usually a meditation on the abstract nature of painting. Then he formulates details of the painting, its media, style, and form. Works in this show are from the Version series, based on images of installations, that is, rooms in a gallery. He re-presents images of the gallery in pristine, painted form as a reference point for both art viewing and art making. This work comments on the connection between the white cube of the gallery, and the white canvas of a painter. These small, meticulous paintings resonate with the Northern European tradition of interior paintings as well as referencing contemporary sources, Ed Ruscha’s sixteen gas stations and parking lots, and William Anastasi’s exhibition of photographs of empty walls of the gallery.

A graduate of Sweden’s Malmö Art Academy, Mårtensson has exhibited widely throughout Europe. He is featured in several prominent collections in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Mexico and the United States. This is his first show in the United States.

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Dates: October 19–November 30, 2007
Reception: November 3, 6–8 pm
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am–4 pm
Location: 514 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Contact: 505.766.9888, info@levygallery.com, www.levygallery.com @levygallery