Black Box: Decoding the Art Work of Martin Gantman

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 arts 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 arts raison dêtre; and developed his visual muscle in the warren of posts- that were coined during the 1980s to lessen historys stranglehold on arts 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 modernisms 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.