Incantation: The Art of Martin Wittfooth
In “Loot Bag”, which appeared at Roq La Rue in Seattle last year, Martin Wittfooth depicts a pelican whose beak overflows with stuff. A doll, a toy elephant, and a pig pop out from the mess as though they are trying to escape. Soda cans, balloons, disposable cups and fast food make up much of the rest of the contents that prop open the pelican’s beak like a kitchen trash can.
“We mass produce a bunch of shit that’s colorful and attractive in a very instinctive way and will only be appreciated for a very short amount of time,” says Wittfooth, by phone. The New York-based artist mentions the way that garbage has littered oceans—”exploding junk,” he says—creating big environmental problems like the famed “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Wittfooth’s pelican recalls images of animals caught in a human-made mess. But that’s only part of what he accomplishes in the painting.
Wittfooth creates another layer of meaning in the image by including toys that resemble animals. “Caricatures of things in nature,” he calls them. They might, he says, prompt people to react with “how cute.” It’s the adorable part of nature without any connection to the natural world itself, a way to find beauty in nature’s animals without interacting with it.
Human relationships with nature inform Wittfooth’s work. His oil paintings feature animals in the starring roles. Humans are absent from the scenes he depicts, but the remnants of their world frequently are not. In “The Aviary,” a cheetah is perched on a cherry tree and joined by a few, scattered birds. They overlook a crumbling, brick wall, catching a glimpse of the city that rises from below.
A similar situation occurs in “Occupy,” where a bull balances on a steel beam above the New York skyline. In “Harvester,” a bear rummages through a basket of flowers, a few pieces of trash lay strewn on the ground in front of him. In “Pieta II,” a tiger lounges on top of a rusted car.
“At one point, I abandoned the human figure altogether,” says Wittfooth, who was featured on the cover of Hi-Fructose in 2011. With animals, the artist can tell a different kind of story. “When you see a painting with a human figure,” he says, “it becomes their story, not your own subjective one.”
Whenever people are faced with natural forces doing what they do, usually the response to that has been with fear.”
For Wittfooth, animals play upon the audience’s ability to draw comparisons between specific beasts and they behaviors or ideas they represent. They can make what Wittfooth calls “universal connotations.” Since Wittfooth often reflects upon global issues in his works, this comes in handy. “Instead of actually portraying myself, I’m using symbolic imagery with animals,” he says.
With last year’s Roq La Rue show, Wittfooth dealt heavily with “the commodification of nature.” Carnival and circus themes were used to amplify the point. Right now, though, the artist is taking his work in a slightly different direction.
Wittfooth is in the beginning stages of a series that will take about two-and-a-half years to complete. The first installment will appear this fall at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York. The theme is shamanism, but he specifies that this is a “broad, umbrella” description of the theme. It’s not completely new terrain for Wittfooth. He says that the pieces will be “along the same lines” of what he has done in the past. Plus, the 2014 paintings, “Shaman I” and “Shaman II” point in this new direction.
“I’ve had these images bouncing around in my head for quite a while,” says Wittfooth, adding that he had been thinking about this series while putting together the Roq La Rue show and handling commissions last year. “They’ve been lingering,” Wittfooth says of the images on his mind. In the past three months, though, “they’ve been materializing more and more.”
He’s working on the large pieces first. One of two works on his plate (at the time of this interview) is set to be ten feet wide. Oil paintings will be the focal point of the series, although Wittfooth may include some charcoal drawings at the Levine show. He’s also planning an installation for a museum exhibition that will likely take place in 2017.
We mass produce a bunch of shit that’s colorful and attractive in a very instinctive way and will only be appreciated for a very short amount of time”
What we lost along the way was a way to communicate with nature.”
Wittfooth’s inspiration for the new series is Terence McKenna, the late-twentieth-century counter-culture figure who spoke extensively on shamanism and psychedelics. McKenna, who died in 2000, wrote the book The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess and the End of History. Wittfooth cites McKenna’s idea of an “archaic revival” when we speak of the need to reconnect with nature. “We haven’t lost that connection,” Wittfooth says. “But, I agree with Terence McKenna that we’ve largely forgotten it.”
Wittfooth adds his interpretation of what he has learned from McKenna. “What we lost along the way was a way to communicate with nature,” he says, adding that humans can act as though nature is there to serve us. That’s an idea that has been part of his work for a while, but by bringing in the element of shamanism, he’s adding something more. Essentially, he’s transferring the psychedelic aspects of shamanism to the animals in his works, presenting the characters as the figures that can help unlock parts of the human consciousness.
“There’s this idea that nature has become an enemy,” says Wittfooth. “Whenever people are faced with natural forces doing what they do, usually the response to that has been with fear.” He continues, “There’s a fear-based response rather than one with any kind of balance, where you can work with what’s going on in the natural world.”
Wittfooth is taking the fear out of the natural world. In his paintings, the animals are the ones who can help humans reach a new level of understanding. They become guides who reveal various aspects of humanity to the audience. They show how our world can alter—maybe even destroy—theirs. In Wittfooth’s painting, it’s the animals who are the teachers.*
This article first appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 35. Get a copy here.
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