The Spell Art Collection

484 Broome is pleased to present Brazilian artist Pedro Silva and Argentinian- American artist Stefan Martin in a duo exhibition, The Spell Art Collection, open through March 22, 2021

Taken as a whole, the collection is expressive of the transformative power of words as a diary and manifestations. In an era of text message and social media, Silva’s work documents his personal history and embodies messages of gratitude and empowerment. Silva’s journey in America started at the Art Student’s League in painting, as he spent 5 years waiting to get his green card. During this time he developed the Spell Art Movement as a sort of therapy, and wrote the words “I Love Myself” as an ink on paper series 500 times. Seen in the show as oil painted on a circular mirror, the reflection is as much a reminder as a challenge toward self love.

In tandem, Martin developed the works’ found materials: discarded boxes and packaging by Amazon and other delivery services, that the artists discovered piled throughout the sidewalks on their walks together through New York during the early pandemic. Disturbed by the excess waste, Martin repurposed the materials to transform them into functional forms.

Taking note to the natural forms of fossilized wood, Martin layered each piece of corrugated cardboard with wood glue, “I embraced this process as a meditation, to observe the relationship of material stacked together as a beautiful dance- sometimes awkward, sometimes seamless. It is derived from the environment, used for packaging, and repurposed as design, an organic process that inspires me,” said Martin. A study of comfort and shape of the body, these pieces took an uncanny form as Silva would lend his painter’s stroke and portrait their quarantine lives in his Spell Art style, and create a mixture of plaster and oil paint to give a lacquer, petroleum, or resin aesthetic to others.

Silva attributed each furniture piece with mostly feminine names, derived from his vision of a muse. Giving energy and personality to these one of a kind pieces, the effect is one of both intense originality and a familiar classical form, as Martin alludes towards the deconstructivist periods in Architecture made mainstream by Frank Gehry in the sculptural quality of the designs. Raised in Las Vegas, Martin’s upbringing was one of flashy consumerism and facades. As he would question the constitution of the columns and fake sky as a child in The Caesar’s Palace, the possibility arose during the pandemic of using upcycled and sustainable material as furniture to achieve a refined assemblage aesthetic into functional furniture.

The Spell Art Collection brings honesty and energy in its paintings and furniture. In Silva’s words, “We used what we had and said what we felt, in an new era of change and reflection.”