There were so many shows and exhibitions that we were excited to see this past Spring and Summer, and one in our own backyard was the Eddie Martinez & Sam Moyer shared solo show Arthur at Ratio 3 in San Francisco. Although the husband and wife duo have a different set of styles and approaches, placed together the works have an obvious dialogue, with both abstraction, figuration, color and texture in balance.
As Ratio 3 is closed for public health reasons, we still wanted to share the works, many of which we spoke of the progress when we interviewed Eddie Martinez in our Spring 2020 issue. One of the most memorable things that Martinez spoke of in our interview was the idea of large outputs and working constantly. He said to us, "someone like Picasso, not only was he making all kinds of work in different mediums all the time, he was also exhausting the same sort of compositions and imagery because he just felt like they were always variable. That's something that has hit me. That's something I just respond to with his work right away because it feels natural to me anyway. And seeing someone who did it their whole life sort of gave me more confidence to do it."
Many of the works in Arthur have a quality of figuration and ideas that come in and out, fleshed out and natural in their progression. From still-lifes and blockheads to Martinez's work and the ways that Moyer works with shades and shapes, how she worked with textiles and now these marble and hand-painted canvas work are all about this wonderful output of ideas and process of making art. And sometimes, there is just a beauty in seeing that process and conversation in a gallery setting. —Evan Pricco
