Human Gardens

Beers London

5 March - 2 April

When we view the works of Martin Daiber, we see a sort of organized chaos: structures that aspire to break from their confines, and others that seem clipped, as if the Chilean artist has attempted to create thoughtful systems of representation.

In his first gallery solo, entitled Human Gardens, Daiber presents paintings, works on paper, and sculptures that seem to question the very nature and desire of our existence. At this point, it seems almost trite to state that any creative works have arisen as a result of mid- or post-pandemic society, but the reality is that this context is inescapable and inevitable. In 2021 the artist and his family moved to Aschersleben, Germany, for a residency. For three months his life (and that of his wife and child) were limited to his work in the residency studio. This idea of confinement, estrangement, and even confusion seems to enfold and form the very existence of these works.

The allusions to Analytical Cubism are apt. The Cubists, namely Picasso and Bracques, were inspired by an attempt to record multiple iterations of time and space within one pictorial image. In Daibers’s work, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine the artist working through various states of mind. Working through ‘making sense’ of a new environment and the problems and excitements posed therein. Questioning a world that has created restrictions and confinements, actually, seems perfectly suited to Daiber’s stylistic tendencies.