Paintings of the Subsoil

At times, the very processes that damage the landscape accidentally produce images of an unsettling beauty.
This series grew out of close observation of surfaces found along the shoreline: oxides, sediments, cracks, pigments and degraded materials which, when isolated through photography, temporarily lose their scale and context.
The ground begins to resemble something else.
Stains, veins, textures and accumulations recall abstract painting and matter-based art, although nothing visible in these images was created with a pictorial intention.
This is the contradiction that interests me.
What may appear visually compelling is, at the same time, the consequence of deterioration and of materials that should not form part of that landscape.
In Paintings from Below Ground, photography does not invent the image.
It finds it.


Matter as Pigment

During my first observations of the site, I discovered that some of the materials present along the coast were producing, without any artistic intention, surfaces of remarkable visual richness.
Corroded iron generated reds, ochres and blacks. Sediments, salts, industrial remnants and erosion produced layers, cracks, transparencies and textures that could recall certain languages of abstract painting, Informalism and matter-based art.
I decided to approach these surfaces through photography. By almost entirely removing any reference to the wider landscape and concentrating on small fragments of terrain, scale becomes ambiguous. It is no longer immediately clear whether we are looking at rock, a painting, an eroded surface or something we cannot quite identify.
I do not alter these compositions. I find them within the landscape itself.
That is why I call the series Paintings from Below Ground.
The word ‘paintings’ does not describe a technique, but a way of looking.


The Fossil of the Future

These images, however, retain a second reading.
The colours and textures they reveal are not produced solely by natural processes.
Many of these surfaces contain metals, plastics, cables, industrial fragments and other remnants physically embedded in the terrain.
The term Anthropocene is widely used to describe the scale of human impact on the planet. Within this project, I am particularly interested in that impact when it begins to acquire a lasting material presence in the landscape.
Waste does not simply disappear. It fragments, erodes, corrodes and, in some cases, becomes trapped among sediments and natural materials.
This creates a paradox that runs throughout the series:
degradation can produce visually compelling images without making what caused them any less problematic.
The photographs record precisely this tension.
They are images of the present, but they also allow us to imagine what material remnants of our time might endure.
Forms emerge from eroded matte

The Wound of the Stratum

Artist: José R. Martín (Jrmartin), 2025
Series: Paintings of the Subsoil
Medium: Digital photograph printed on canvas
Dimensions: 160 × 80 cm

The Wound in the Stratum begins with a real fragment of coastal terrain in which remnants of human origin appear trapped among natural materials.
What caught my attention was the intense reddish line produced by oxidation. As it runs across the surface, the mark seems to behave visually like a brushstroke, an open wound across the material.
By isolating the fragment through photography, almost all reference to the wider landscape disappears. Rock, sediment, industrial remnants and oxides begin to form an image that approaches abstraction and matter-based art.
I did not create these colours or textures. They were already there.
Photography simply changes the scale and framing in order to reveal a composition that the deterioration of the site itself had produced.
Hence the title:
a wound that is not painted onto the stratum, but formed within it.

Fossil Weave

Artist: José R. Martín (Jrmartin), 2025
Series: Paintings of the Subsoil
Medium: Digital photograph printed on canvas
Dimensions: 160 × 80 cm

Fossil Weave shows a fragment of fishing net trapped among sediments and eroded materials along the shoreline.
What caught my attention was how the original structure of the net remained recognisable while, at the same time, it had been deeply transformed by wear, encrustation and prolonged exposure to the environment.
The weave appeared hardened, almost petrified.
By isolating this fragment through photography, the net temporarily loses its condition as a functional object and begins to resemble a mineral or fossil formation embedded within the terrain.
This is not a fossil in the scientific sense.
It is an association produced through looking.
A net made by us beginning to acquire the appearance of a structure belonging to another time.

Exhumed Veins

Artist: José R. Martín (Jrmartin), 2025
Series: Paintings of the Subsoil
Medium: Digital photograph printed on canvas
Dimensions: 160 × 80 cm

Exhumed Veins shows cables and metal fragments deeply altered by corrosion, intermingled with sediment and other remnants along the shoreline.
What caught my attention was their almost organic appearance.
The curved and branching forms recall veins, nerves or roots emerging from within the ground. Corrosion strengthens this impression, transforming the metal into a material that, at moments, becomes visually difficult to separate from its surroundings.
By isolating this fragment through photography, the surface ceases to function simply as a record of waste and takes on an almost anatomical quality.
Hence the title.
These are not real veins or the remains of an organism.
They are materials made by us which time has made resemble part of a buried body.

Oxidised Flow

Artist: José R. Martín (Jrmartin), 2025
Series: Paintings of the Subsoil
Medium: Digital photograph printed on canvas
Dimensions: 160 × 80 cm

Oxidised Flow shows metal remnants trapped among materials along the shoreline and deeply altered by corrosion.
What caught my attention was the way the oxidation spread around them.
Reddish, ochre and dark tones seem to move across the surface and through its cracks, creating a sense of movement. By isolating this fragment through photography, the metal remnants begin to recede and colour itself starts to structure the image.
The surface then approaches the language of matter-based painting: accumulations, lines, stains and shifts in tone produced without any pictorial intervention.
I did not add these colours or construct this composition.
The deteriorating material had begun to paint by itself.

Inverted Fossil

Artist: José R. Martín (Jrmartin), 2025
Series: Paintings of the Subsoil
Medium: Digital photograph printed on canvas
Dimensions: 160 × 80 cm

Inverted Fossil begins with a remnant of human origin trapped within a coastal surface deeply altered by erosion and time.
What caught my attention was its appearance.
The dark form, partially embedded in the surrounding material, could resemble the trace of an organism or a fossil fragment uncovered within the rock.
But here, that relationship is reversed.
We are not looking at the remains of some distant form of life, but at an object from our own time beginning to acquire the appearance of something ancient.
By isolating it through photography, that ambiguity becomes more apparent: for a moment, it is difficult to decide whether we are looking at a natural formation, a fossil or a piece of waste.
Hence the title.
It is not a trace of the past. It is the present beginning to look like archaeology.

Figures of the Shorelines
Layers of the Present