Artist Talk: Isabel M. Martinez

Artist Talk: Isabel M. Martinez
Saturday, May 2, 2026
1:00pm - 3:00pm
Artist remarks will begin at 1:30pm
Free to attend

Join us for a casual talk with artist Isabel Martinez at 1:30 pm on their Main Gallery exhibition I Was Thinking About All of This and All the While I Kept Walking Further and Further, in Wider and Wider Circles, on view until May 23, 2026.

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MAIN GALLERY
I Was Thinking About All of This and All the While I Kept Walking Further and Further, in Wider and Wider Circles
Isabel M. Martinez
Isabel M. Martínez’s exhibition I Was Thinking About All of This and All the While I Kept Walking Further and Further, in Wider and Wider Circles investigates the influence that the Sun, Moon, Earth and Solar System play in our shifting understanding of place within it.
Blending printmaking with photo-based practices, drawing, and sculpture, the artist considers subversions in image-making through hybridization and misuse of artistic mediums. The artworks on view share a common interest in experimental methodologies as a means to upend traditional systems and the ways in which they shape our perception.
The works in From Walking so Much in Circles, I Will End up Making a Sphere – Chapter II were made in collaboration with the Sun and the Moon. They are drawings burnt by sunlight and bathed in moonlight onto a hand-made gum bichromate emulsion. The emulsion was altered to give results that it is not supposed to, and the light drawings were devised through a half-blind way of working; balancing planning, readiness, and awareness of the thing that happens.
Looking at a Glass of Still Water is a series of printmaking copper plates mounted on the wall as unique artworks, overriding their conventional function as tools for print production. The images they hold stand in the interval between seeing and recognition. Their iridescence demands a viewing from multiple angles. Oscillating between micro and macro scales, they remind us of galaxies, supernovas, microbial environments, and the nuclei of cells.
In Lunes es por Luna/Monday is for Moon, seven sculptural forms materialize the negative space of the artists’ left hand squeezing clay. Operating as handheld cameras of sorts, they nest a gelatin silver film negative within. In the week surrounding the summer solstice, each day at noon, one ‘camera’ was pointed towards the celestial body the weekday is named after. Bulging 24K gold leaf alludes to the sunlight the photographic film was exposed to. The silver in the gelatin emulsion serves as a symbol for moonlight.
I Was Thinking About All of This and All the While I Kept Walking Further and Further, in Wider and Wider Circles undermines traditional image-making systems in favour of a wayward approach from the periphery that is part of a larger dialogue. Much like thought experiments or philosophical musings, Martínez’s exhibition invites viewers to an exchange of open-ended questions about ways of seeing and perceiving.
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Isabel M. Martínez is a Toronto-based visual artist who spent her formative years in Santiago de Chile. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and artist-run centres including Gallery 44, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (ES), Empty Gallery, Proyectos Solís (ES), Sur Gallery, Museo Nacional de la Fotografía (CO), Theoretische Kunstprojecten (NL), Angell Gallery, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The Image Centre at TMU, the Photophobia Contemporary Moving Image Festival, and the CAFKA Biennial of Contemporary Art, among others.
Her artwork has been reviewed and featured in publications such as FOAM Amsterdam, DeGids, Revista Artishock, Prefix Photo, CBC Arts, Blackflash, Kapsula Magazine, Repaint History, The Creators Project, The Huffington Post, and in a collaboration with the Center for Quantum Nanoscience at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. Martínez holds an MFA from the University of Guelph in Canada and a BFA from Universidad Católica de Chile.
Isabel M. Martínez gratefully acknowledges support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
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Images in order (provided courtesy the artist):

1 - 2) Isabel M. Martinez, Looking at a Glass of Still Water #1, #2, #3 (left to right), 2023. Etched copper, heat, oxidation, light-sensitive compound, UV protection topcoat, 10" x 8" each. The second image is a detail of the artwork.
3) Isabel M. Martinez, Sun/Moon Drawing #17 (From Walking so Much in Circles, I Will End up Making a Sphere Chapter II), 2023. Sunlight/Moonlight drawing and gum bichromate emulsion on watercolour paper, frame size: 15.5" × 12.5".
4) Isabel M. Martinez, Lunes es por Luna / Monday is for Moon, 2025. Clay, 24K gold leaf, gelatin silver film negative, steel, acrylic, 8" × 21" × 3", variable.

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