Mémoires d'un électron 2003

Jorge Martins created "Mémoires d'un électron" with graphite, making marks that loop and soar across the paper. You get the feeling he’s trying to wrangle something unruly and invisible. Imagine Martins in his studio, the pencil dancing in his hand, trying to capture the elusive quality of an electron, those tiny particles that whizz around us all the time. There's a stack of spiraling lines, a kind of tornado shape, that seems to anchor the composition, and then these meandering, free-flowing lines everywhere else that evoke movement and energy, like thoughts trailing off. The whole piece feels like a map of the mind, or a diagram of unseen forces. I think Martins is having a conversation here with a long tradition of mark-making in art. It's like he's saying, "How can I make something solid out of something so ephemeral?” Artists always build on each other's ideas, so Martins' work inspires me to explore the uncharted territories of my own imagination.