Welcome to Art Curious-Contemporary
William Martin on a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
photograph courtesy of the writer ©2024
As the director and main content creator for Art Curious-Contemporary (AC-C), I bring decades of experience including visual art, audio-arts, philosophy, and technology to the virtual art space. AC-C is a diverse platform for reviews of the visual arts, music, and related technologies. Coming soon is a gallery page for promoting projects I find forward-looking. Explorations, announcements, and reviews will include digital photography, collaborations with Generative Art, installations, and long-standing art practices such as printmaking and painting.
A little bit about me; I am a graduate of Brooklyn College (MFA, Drawing+Painting), where I was inspired to study with Lee Bontecou. While painting was my focus, I also explored lithography and intaglio printmaking techniques. Philip Pearlstein, Lois Dodd, William T. Williams, and Allan D’Arcangelo were other artists at Brooklyn College who influenced me in making contemporary art – all of them driven by a unique curiosity about art-making, its histories, technologies, and effects on image-making.
I began my art career in New York as a lithographer, privileged to work with among the most inventive artists of the time. By age twenty-four I was recognized by the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, as one of the lithographers for Trestle Editions for multiple large-scale and limited-edition print collaborations with Robert Motherwell. Soon after this honor, I founded Oberon Press LTD NYC, my press in Tribeca – riding the wave of the enormous interest in limited edition prints.
As the New York Art World collectively began another shift, my gaze turned to the young but burgeoning field of computers. I taught myself networking after taking apart my first computer down to the nuts and bolts and putting it back together again (much to the relief of my partner). Fast forward some years later, and I was involved in creating global networks that connected and still connect people in ways never before seen or experienced. These have been exciting and re-orienting times, yet I always maintained an active interest in creative expression. In parallel, I have written circumscribed reviews for the cutting-edge British-based Master Quality Authenticated or MQA platform. These encapsulated reviews are based on experiences in my own ‘listening lab’ space.
Most recently, I have begun work with one of the largest art houses in the world. This has given me a broad purview of art cultures today. As I have re-tooled my career many times while keeping my eyes on the horizon, I continue to wonder what new things might be made, how these things might change our world for the better, and how I might be a part of making that happen. These inquiries are the foundations of Art Curious-Contemporary.
We hope you visit artcurious-contemporary often as more content evolves and sparks curiosity and wonder.