Unlike ordinary mirrors where we ostensibly believe in the reality of what we see, these works - ‘Run, Run, Run’ (2014) - amplify the distorting effect of mirrors, highlighting the way reality breaks down with ever-changing circles of colour – reflecting, refracting - with light and movement. These multitude of convex mirrors are obvious abstract constructions generated to delude the viewer.
Carrie Miller, ‘Run run run ‘ exhibition text , Melbourne, 2014
The surfaces are made from hundreds of reflectors, which have been artfully melted and distorted, like flounces on a hem. In their proliferation, the swelling shapes look as if they might be copious petals fanning out from a central stem of nectar. As reflectors, they take on the ambient light with a vengeance.
Robert Nelson, ‘Marti’s Garden of Distortion’, The Age, Australia ,2014
EXHIBITION LINK:Run, run, run, 2014
Dani Marti’s new series Fool’s Paradise takes this mysterious concept as the foundation for his illusory paintings made from reflectors in varying arrangements with titles as if from an ancient poem or song. Compositions and arrangements of moon yellow and dawn, coastal blue and honey sizzles, hospital green and golden peach, endless green and morning wisps sit alongside others of night-tide forest and sizzling thirst, deep victory and howls in blue and yellow; lastly slippery silvery stones and fading histories. Each arrangement weaves words, colours and emotions into a seamless, floating poem that draws the beholder into its mysteries and tales composed from reflectors that twist and writhe across the surface.
EXHIBITION LINK and exhibition essay by Donna West Brett, August 2016 :Fools Paradise, 2016
The artist’s new work continues to be a meditation on human embodiment. Rather than the conceptual focal point, however, the nature of corporeality is reckoned with in and through the artmaking process itself. The daily grind of creating such labor-intensive work deeply implicates Marti’s own body, own sense of self in it.
The reflective surfaces of Dust flirt with the viewer’s perception, suggesting the little particles of dust percolating in space, catching colour and light, that we see if we immerse ourselves in the immediacy of our experience. The work reveals itself in its constant play with the viewer’s movement – flickering moments of reflected light in time and space. The reflectors simultaneously function as mirrors: the man-made material we rely on to literally see who we are. Of course, dust is also what we are. In this sense, these works are both portraits of us as individuals and reminders that this is a perceptual illusion, permitting us to see that the separation between us and the world is ultimately a false one. The viewer is given a window into the infinite landscape of undivided material existence of which they an infinitesimal part. The reductive minimalism of the DOT series also renders visible the way our existence can be broken down into basic, generic units of matter that elide any concept of a unique, individual being.
Carrie Miller, press release , 2021
Inspired by the pink salt lakes of south-eastern Australia, Marti has manipulated the circular perfection of each reflector to craft textures redolent of the crystalline salt endemic to the lakes. It’s no accident that they also resemble misshapen Baroque pearls. Pink lakes are hyper-saline environments whose hue is caused by a type of bacterium, defined as extremophile as it thrives in environments that others cannot tolerate. The salt content and volume are also a register of this continent’s age – Marti as a recent arrival has a deep appreciation that he lives on ancient, unceded Country.
Lisa Slade, Dani Marti: Extremophile, Exhibition Catalogue , 'Oh Canola!', Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 2022
