Beautifully funny

Get thyself to Gaffa Galleries and check out Kare Martens, ‘Beautiful and Pointless.’ His quirky, colourful digital photographs are bursting with humour and fun, while his oil paintings with their black backgrounds feel mysterious and secretive.

Martens is a communications designer by trade and produces film posters and book covers here in Australia and Scandinavia. His choice of crisp, clean, eye catching colour palettes combined with enticing objects and arrangements testify to his designer persuasions. You can easily image these pieces in a smart coffee table magazine or gracing the cover of a best seller. The simple yet peculiar images hint at a narrative yet to be revealed, asking the viewer to relish in their tongue in cheek titles and pictorial  jocularity.

He states in the exhibition catalogue that this work is about catching “ideas that popup” from his unconscious mind, ideas which have laid “dormant” in his “designer’s brain,” ideas that command “visual expression.” And command they do. As I wandered through all of Gaffas galleries I could not help but return to gallery 1 invigorated by Martens ‘funny bugger’ approach to art and design, his sophisticated images and their playful attitude.

So get yourself to Gaffa Creative Precinct and Studios ASAP, it's just a 5min walk from Town Hall station and with its bespoke jewelry studios, arcade and galleries I’m sure you could get all your Xmas shopping done in no time.

https://www.karemartens.com
https://www.haikustudios.net/

http://gaffa.com.au/
Gallery 1, 22 November - 3 December 2018
281 Clarence St, Sydney. NSW. 2000
Mon - Fri 10-6pm, Sat 11-5pm