In her foreword to the book, Black Box: Decoding the Art Work of Martin Gantman, the noted art historian and artist, Dr. Lise Patt, writes the following:
Martin Gantman grew his artistic bones during the last throes of modernism, when art's autonomy had already been undermined and all that
remained of this enduring style were the simple, clean lines of formalism.
He cut his intellectual teeth on conceptualism, a short-lived art movement with long-ranging impact on art's raison d'être; and developed his
visual muscle in the warren of 'posts-' that were coined during the 1980s
to lessen history's stranglehold on art's discourses, institutions, and
practices. Yet, by the time Gantman hit his stride as a visual artist he had
already severed many of the ties that tethered him to these varied movements. If, in 1913, Duchamp drew a line in modernism's sandbox, then by
the 1990s Martin Gantman had crossed that line to become a contemporary artist, a practitioner who disavows history and any long-standing art
historical style with work that analyses the status of art and the state of the
world as they both exist in the here and now.
This book describes the theoretical bases, process, and development of the artist, Martin Gantman, through an almost 40-year span of art production. It details the evolution of his practice through 10 individual books, each based on a theoretical or practical interest that compelled him during his years of production.
Martin Gantman is a Los Angeles based artist and writer who has exhibited internationally in such venues as AC Direct Gallery and the Alternative Museum, New York; A.R.C. Gallery, Chicago; Kristi Engle Gallery, HAUS, POST, in Los Angeles; Werkstadt Berlin, Galerie Merkel, Whylen, Germany; Artetica, Rome and Viareggio, Italy; and La Coruna, Spain. His multi-faceted undertaking, "Empire," was recently exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, California. In 2015 he exhibited a recently completed project, "Intersections," at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, and showed his current project, "Worldview," in April, at Another Year in L.A Gallery. His published work includes, "See you when we get home." a project for Art Journal magazine. As well, recent published writings include: "The Irresolute Potential in the Unimagined Possibility," "Swingin' in the Slammer," "The Word Was Charm," "DuSable Park: An archeology," "Notes on the Oddness of Things," and "Mapping the Lost Idea." He also co-edited "Benjamin's Blind Spot: Walter Benjamin and the Premature Death of Aura" for the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, distributed by DAP Publications in 2001. His project, "The Odalisque Suite," was presented at the College Art Association annual conference in New York in 2000; and, at the 2012 conference in Los Angeles, he chaired a panel session entitled: Tracking the Movement of Investigatory Art.
