Martin and Muñoz

"The Cliff," 2006, C-Print mounted on Plexiglas, (39 x 67 inches).

Like fairy tales or dreams Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz construct trancelike, metaphorical panoramic photographs and snow globes. The collaborative team, which have been working together since 1993, draw from art historical references ranging from Goya and Persian miniatures to literary references from William Blake to Zadie Smith. The photographs are also influenced by pictorial Chinese landscape painting which use negative space as atmosphere and small figures in wide expanses. The images tell expressive tales of lonesome travelers in the frozen wilderness that contain an arctic topography of snow-clad hills, boulders and dead trees where one or more tiny sculpted people are passing through or stranded. The result is a stage everyone is bound to enter when life has lost its warmth and promise, at which point finding a new way becomes desperately urgent.

- Cerealart