Inaugural Exhibit, “Faces, Figures, Fantasy,” Featuring Works by Photographer Charles Martin on View through May 16
by Bernice Elizabeth Green
Ernani Silva’s Global Vision Art Gallery, located at 87 Ft. Greene Place, Brooklyn, opened on April 27, with its first exhibit titled “Faces, Figures, Fantasy,” celebrating the works of photographer Charles Martin. Martin, also an accomplished journalist, filmmaker and author, is known worldwide for his use of the camera as a stop-motion device, capturing the point at which incidental moments of real-life transfer their powers to memory.
His photographic abstractions have been described as a form of “instants” in live action when moment transfers its power to memory.
Martin, also an accomplished writer and journalist, employs the camera as story-telling tool with himself in the role of facilitator as opposed to documenter, resulting in each observer providing a singular narrative. It can be said that Martin’s camera is the eye that launched and inspired a thousand points of view all over the world. As a testament to his global outreach, Martin’s photographs have been exhibited in numerous one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States, in Europe and in South America.
Global Vision Art Gallery’s “Faces, Figures, Fantasy” exhibition also offers other interesting pieces from Martin’s extensive body of work, including photographic portraits of such notables as the legendary activist Angela Davis and the beloved writer Toni Morrison.
A photograph Martin took of himself with Global Vision Art Gallery founder Silva is so much of a standout in the Gallery, it has — and deserves — a wall of its own.
Silva and Martin’s colleague Minna Dunn (curator for the Joysetta and Julian Pearse African American Museum of Nassau County) offered her view of Martin’s work to Our Time Press, this past Sunday at Silva’s warm, lively reception attended by area art lovers and collectors. “Martin’s abstracts are stunning. They display fleeting everyday life-moments frozen in time at the nexus of present becoming past.”
The Pennsylvania-born Charles Martin who lives in New York City, has an MA and PhD in Spanish and Portuguese languages from the Yale School of the Arts, where he also studied photography.
His works have been exhibited in the U.S., at such cultural venues as The Brooklyn Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of the City of New York, The Center for Photographer at Woodstock. Expect to see more interesting art at Global Vision Art Gallery, located in the heart of Brooklyn’s growing cultural arts district, and just across from the historic Brooklyn Academy of Music.
“Faces, Figures, Fantasy” will be on view at Global Vision Art Gallery through Thursday, May 16. Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00am to 6pm. Contact: 516-993-2136.
Silva contributes to Our Time Press as a Guest Editor- Arts &Culture in one of Our Time Press’s special June Men’s Month and Juneteenth issues