Goldsmiths - University of London

For his first solo commission in a British public space Simon Martin presents Untitled (2008), a new single-screen video installation conceived specially for this exhibition at Chisenhale.

Martin’s practice examines the cultural significance of art and artifacts and our relationship to them, and encompasses painting, sculpture and moving image. In recent years he has focused almost exclusively on film. Untitled marks a departure into the realm of high definition, CAD (computer assisted design) animation.

In 1998 Martin made a photorealist painting of a strawberry poison dart frog based on a found photograph. Untitled returns to that same source image though here it is rendered in a fully three-dimensional state. The animation of the frog could be seen as a collection of establishing shots, carefully observing the creature and exploring the virtual space of the synthetic image. Moving between stillness and motion, Martin’s digital rendering of the photographic image creates an uncanny effect and a self-reflexive comment on the construction of images.