A journey through the visual universe of Fabian Marti, whose mystical photograms celebrate the alteration of consciousness through substances and shapes.
This book is a trip. A trip through the visual realms of the artist Fabian Marti. Its prevailing cosmic black is subtly accentuated now and then by color: the milky white of mountain crystal, the raw dun of rock caves, the sandy beige of pillared Greek ruins. Or color as a by-product of alchemistic photogram processes. The shapes are original and familiar. Marti reinterprets symbols and reviews the cultural history of modernity and beyond. A journey through time as past and present blend in simultaneity. Digital and analog united. Scanned objects revealed: mushrooms, stones, toast, a pair of hands. And modified pictures from outside sources.
This is a book about altered states of consciousness triggered by substances and shapes. It's about spiritual views and mystical experiences—and their negation. Not somber, not sad, not heavy, but contemplative and awake. An oscillation between yes and no.
The picture section is rounded out byessays by Erik Davis and Irish philosopher Paul J. Ennis.
Fabian Marti was born in 1979 in Fribourg, Switzerland. From 2002 to 2006, he studied at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Zurich (HGKZ), Department of Photography. In 2008, Marti visited the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. He lives and works in Zurich and Los Angeles concentrating on photography, sculpture, video and installation. Fabian Marti creates photographs that let their topics emerge out of obscurity as though catching glimpse of shiny cat's eyes in the darkest of the night. On one level Fabian Marti's photograms and ceramics relate strongly to formalism, abstraction and op art. However, the artist is further interested in the sensations related to a loss of control and the access to the subconscious. Never working directly with the camera, his large-format prints are either photograms or created by a mere desktop scanner, evolving this illuminating black and white chromacity that lend them the patina of forensic evidence. His subjects—spirals, crosses, runes and crystals—start merging to dissipate into ironic forms on the traditional vanitas.
