Josmartin L X: Faith in the Power of a Line

By Vishal Tondon

Detail of 'Transfiguration'

An encounter with the intuitive and profound drawings of Josmartin L X can be a very revealing experience. The more you spend time with them, the more you realize that the intricate building up of patterns is not for visual effect, but the process of making is in itself the thing. When faced with such work, one becomes increasingly conscious of the fact that one should not confuse product with process. The product – in this case the drawings at hand – is not the art but the result of art. Art is a process. Period.

There lies at the bottom of every drawing an implied pattern of those movements through which it was created. The movements of the cursive and organic lines in Martin’s work replicate the patterns of growth and destruction inherent in nature. Nature builds on the one hand through a premeditated pattern of creative energy called the Flux, and on the other hand through sheer will power that leaves room for serendipity. The process of creating in itself is a compulsion of nature as well as the artist, and very often the process is allowed to take over – caution thrown to the wind. The delightful complexity of Martin’s work lies in the confluence of Flux and serendipity.

To allow Martin’s drawings to work upon you, it would help to try and grasp them more intuitively rather than only through analysis. Also, the lyricism of his delicate drawings compels one to draw an analogy from the appreciation of music; one has to be continuously aware of the character and qualities of the sequence that went into their composition.

Martin has made some very successful oils on canvas in the past. I question him about the progression from painting to drawing. Martin mentions the quality of underlying movement – the special charm of drawing – which cannot properly be carried over from drawing into a finished work of painting. But there is also another aspect to line – its precariousness. Apparently fixed as a static mark, a line always reminds you of the other possible ways in which it could have been made, so the structure of the artwork is always under the threat of collapse. Moreover, a delicately rendered drawing in pencil – as many of Martin’s finished works are – is always under the threat of erasure. Hence the artwork is always suspended precariously on the tightrope between the sheer will power to create and the wanton urge to destroy.

 
For Martin, building an image is a matter of intense concentration. This is because his forms grow organically with a mind of their own, and through the process of mark making itself. Not for him the facility of the original rough laying-out strokes by which the artist first located his image on the surface.

It takes courage on the part of the artist to propose a drawing as a finished work of art. With his drawings, all Martin has at his disposal for asserting the validity of his statements are lines. Martin has immense faith in the power of a line.