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                                                                                          Martin Spei

The Art of Martin Spei

He creates sculptures of people clutching objects, like valuable items of personal capital, while walking through a fierce wind or as they recline flat on their backs, eyes closed and arms out, in an act of intentional grounding. The comic element of these characters captures both their angst and their dignity.  The physical knowledge of this character comes from his time spent working. This man, with a physique of historic strength, is a laborer of the era of the Ashcan School and the WPA. These characters seem to wrestle with the labor of work, even while having already conquered it, as though they have accomplished a great deal and yet their feelings foretell some defeat.

It’s not a hopeless defeat, but a Sisyphusian dream-world joke -- the characters walk a line between dream and humor. The briefcases they carry with them link both worlds, as though each briefcase holds all that we have gathered, our worldly wealth and information, but also our unconscious. The briefcase seems to keep them in this world, without it, they might float away and ascend to somewhere else. Always, something below the surface of each character is deep and bizarrely humorous.

Martin was raised in France and Detroit, Michigan. After living in Florida and then Chicago, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Martin works mostly in bronze, but he also sculpts using rubber, iron, resin, plaster and wood. His work is represented by galleries in Santa Fe, New York, Orlando, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Manchester, England. 

--Lindsay Ahl, 2009

 “Is it not through play that we know a mind is there at all?”

                                                             - Charles Simic

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