Martin Derner

Martin Derner is a mixed media artist who creates interventions—or as he terms it, “disturbances”—within found objects or readymades such as books, texts, and found photographs. Derner is trained in graphic design, which he uses alongside photography, collage, drawing, and sculpture to grapple with the rapid pace of technology and the increasing distance between two dimensional and three dimensional worlds in contemporary culture. For example, in Derner’s Book- Object series, he carves into the surface of books and magazines, transforming the readable text into a graphic object. In the series Comments, Derner disrupts the surface of several photographic portraits by dripping paint, burning holes, and drawing on the surface of the images, until the original photograph is compromised and abstracted. Similarly, in his 2016 work titled Plant, Derner carves circular patterns on the leaves of a cactus plant. The plant is then transformed, no longer an object of nature, but instead appears to be manmade.

Derner has had solo shows at SODA gallery, the State Scientific Library in Banska Bystrica, and his work has been included in group shows at N.K. PROJECT and City Gallery of Bratislava.