About

Martin Lapenna Holzmeister is an artist from Rio, Brazil. His family background is
a mix of different roots from brazilian Bororo indigenous, portuguese, french, italian and austrian jewish refugees.

Martin grew up at his grandparents house in Rio, which were not only Art lovers but also involved directly in the Art scene.

His Step grandfather Décio Vieira, founded alongside other artists, including Alfredo Volpi, the Neo Concrete Art movement in Brazil. Décio Vieira was a professor at the MAM-Rio, Museum for Modern Art in Rio.

Being raised in the city of Rio with regular visits to his French Italian Mother in the city of Turin and also his German cousins in Bayern, contributed to his multicultural development. Martin holds Brazilian-French nationalities and speaks fluent English, Portuguese, French, Italian and German to a certain extent.

During his Bachelor studies in Visual communications he showed great affinity and interest for all the Art and philosophy classes, specifically Professor Amador Perez (former student of his grandfather) and Professor Cristina Salgado. His final project was a dissertation study about ancient technologies of image representations to more recent systems, from the “Camera obscura” to the digital technologies.

After graduating he moved to Amsterdam where he aspired to study arts at the Rietveld academy, although finally he entered the “Lens Based media” Master program at the Piet Zwart Institute from the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. While attending the course he developed further his skills and knowledge in Moving images and Photography, with focus from ancient to contemporary technologies and its conceptual implications on Art and society. 

Currently Martin works in his studio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Architecture of Time

The work of Martin Holzmeister explores the power of symbols and colors, it defies the surface by creating intangible dimensions. Aiming to achieve invisible realms and access parallel dimensions of existence. Symbols and spaces are created and combined to generate new access and investigate the strange relations existing within the Architecture of Time.

Time and Space an intrinsic relation where our perception and understanding of the world takes place, our journey along this domain brings many possibilities, paths and choices. Choices which evokes experiences, emotions, thoughts and consequently memories. These tend to define and solidify our beings in an environment of constant changes and new experiences, It`s nothing less than a paradox.

A difficult concept to grasp for westerners but quite a common ground base for Eastern philosophies, the constant flow of the river and our different manifestations along this path of surprises. Accepting that we are not fix solid entities but constant changing beings.

Within this constant dance of Mutation different Time-Space configurations open many possibilities and choices. Choices that close doors but open many others in a net of interrelated events. For each door a key event plays a role in this ever-changing configuration.

Which are the values and memories that guide us along this journey? One by one our decisions form the pillars of our structures in this Architecture.

Which configurations did influence and still do over many other events and beings, altering the configuration of many present events and many others to come. Who are those main players and what did the accomplish or triggered in this wave of events?
Which would be our present world if a key figure had turn another path, for instance Isaac Newton or Descartes?

The work of M.Holzmeister opens the “back end” of these events capturing the complexity and interrelations involved. By bringing these configurations back their meanings and interpretations get new life, almost like in a ritualistic way through symbols, color and spaces they reach the public conscience and subconscious.

Certain ideas and events should not disintegrate in the ordinary daily media overdose and mass media shallow channels, rather they should be evoked and offer the viewers space for their own interpretations and mutations.

Works are not restricted to one time or media, in contrary, the mix of those is the work, from sketch to paintings and collages to digital imagery and video projection on space. These hybrid processes keep meanings and forms in constant mutation, like a living form the work evolves as the cycle goes on.
From core intangible ideas to the surface of matter drawings and collages passing into the digital virtual realm where it gets its new vehicle, encoded information, from which it becomes again manifest as light projected in space, where again through the artists intervention gains matter expression in a collage mixed with drawings. Each of these pieces is a fragment of time, building blocks of time put together in a video animation or being mixed in real time through Audio Visual performance experiences.

The path from an Intangible idea to a drawing-collage into Pure encoded information manifesting later as light to materialize again as a drawing-collage is a parallel to nature of particles, which despite manifesting itself as light or Matter are in the end the same although going through different states in time.