Pas de deux, with Sébastien Conard, artist’s book, 64 pages, digital printed, 21 x 29,7 cm, edition: 75, published by Infinitif, 2022

Pas de deux’ is a book collaboration between Sébastien Conard and myself. This book is a dialogue: on one side the colourful, expanding constellations by Conard, on the other, Martens's compact and punctual compostions. An explorative, experimental poem by Jan Op de Beeck interrupts this thrilling danse of images. In epilogue, the reader will find Tom Lambeens’s explicative art historical essay, of which we quote:

“Do these triangles indeed border the Nile? Is there no volcanic unrest at all to be found between their angles? The sheer indifference of such rarely flawless eruptions characterizes the history of nebulas as well as the entire cosmos and our whole existence. What subsists after that, all analogies and differences set apart, is the mutual relation of both sides of each spread. On the left, the pages are bleeding, expanding, almost boundless. In contrast, the serenity of the right-hand pictures is being accentuated by their rounded corners. This latest artifice, akin to graphic narratives, inflates both spaces.”