Kris Martin: Altar/Altering Perspectives

Abstract

Kris Martin: Altar/Altering Perspectives Flemish artist Kris Martin’s work exists in relationship to the city of Ghent and his reflection on that city’s medieval past. His pieces that implicitly engage with the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck question the position of human beings in both physical and subjective relationships to works of art. They invite viewers, particularly residents of Ghent, to participate in a new narrative of Ghent, one that is framed, sometimes literally, by the layers of Romanesque and Gothic art and architecture and the symbolism and visual language of Flemish Christianity. They reveal his baroque interest in bringing together tradition and a contemporary conceptual ideology and fall somewhere between the theatricality of the carnival and the artificiality of the spectacle. While a few pieces pointedly reference a Flemish Catholic ideology, the medieval manipulation of the public and the direct iconography are missing. Through his manipulation of scale and placement in non-traditional locations, the pieces are open to new readings beyond the emotive and didactic. But, much in the tradition of the Northern Renaissance, they engage the viewer intellectually and ask for introspection.

Keywords

• conceptual art
• medieval art
• <i>Ghent Altarpiece</i>
• Ghent
• readymade