Martín La Roche

About the artist - Born in Santiago Chile (1988). Lives and works in Amsterdam.

Martín La Roche studied Visual Arts at the University of Chile in Santiago and then in 2015 he completed a postgraduate program at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Martin works with objects and images and its relation to spoken and written language. In his practice installations, books, drawings, prints are used as means to bring together these different languages (visual, textual, oral, spatial) and unfold them in an intimate setting. The particular and micro reality becomes a good trigger to engage with the present experience, trying to celebrate the material and limited nature of the body and its context.

For this residency Martin is working in Kings’ county hospital at the PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program) with patients, doctors, peer counselors and staff to create a repertoire of memories, shared stories and small potential visual/language exercises. For the project the artist and the patient group is working with a book called "I remember” that was written by visual artist Joe Brainard and published in 1975. He made a collection of different memories always starting each sentence of the book with “I remember”. 

Every Wednesday at PHP they sit down to write their own I remember. This is the point of departure also for thinking about imagination.

“I remember the first time I made an inventory of the objects in my room, I was 15 and I drew them all in one paper with watercolors.”

Different sets of exercises are done by the group, always within a timeframe of one hour, the time allotted to the project. One of these is renaming charts of colors. They started with some color samples brought from a paint store and just try to find proper names for them. Like Baby green, Anxiety, or Cinnamon Pie.

The plan is to transform these collections of stories and exercises into a sort of cabinet or bulletin board that could stay in the hospital and display what we have done and be an inspiration for further exercises.

further information about Martín La Roche
http://www.martinlaroche.nl/

about the residency

press and articles