Publication
SHOWCASE Go Erie.com
credited by
Contributing writer Karen Rene Merkle

One of the advantages of visual art is its ability to capture that is difficult to express in words.

Such is the concept of objective chance, a key element of surrealism. Writer Andre Brenton is credited with originating it. Salvador Dali was perhaps its first and most famous practitioner. And here in Erie, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania art Profeessor D.W. Martin is its standard - bearer.

The primary tenant of objective chance is its celebration of unexpected relationships and surprising juxtapositions - the combing of disparate everyday objects to create a mystical ne visual language. Thin of Dali's dripping clocks hanging from trees, or how Rene Magritte toyed with scale and.superimposed elements suc as fruits and fowl into other wise unusual space and scenes.

Martin views the world in a similarly magical way in his exhibit "Pairing Similarities" on display at the Erie Art Museum's Holstein Gallery.
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His works are fabricated from cast bronze, tin, steel and aluminum, enhanced with paints, patinas and other mediums. Martin is especially fond of combing anatomical elements with inanimate ones. Disembodied hancds and feet rest on chairs. Sometime a chair is held in a hand, or a foot crushesa too. Martin plays with proportions of all the items, and the effect is kooky and entertaining as a "Monty Python" animation.

Such efforts encourage us to reexamine our own relationships with the objects around us, how they fit into our perceptions of reality and, in fact, the vary nature of the reality.

We place dolls and teddy beards in chairs for a charming display. Why not give a seat to a vaguely anthropomorphic yam as well? A wee chair kept fresh in a vacuumed - sealed plastic bag. Folk's store and protect silverware to baseball cards in the same way, and maybe the chair is or will be of value as well.

It's the same impression given off by all of Martin's work. Regardless of size. The chance he depicts might be objective, but the interpretation is purely subjective, affecting each of us in a particular way. The only guarantee that there will be a response, and I'll wager the reactions are large positive, as Martin's approach seems to give us permission to view the world in a different, slightly skewed and wholly enchanted way.

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