ROBERT MARTIN

A Gift of Tears

EDJI Gallery is pleased to announce Robert Martin's upcoming solo exhibition, opening on September 2nd in Brussels.

Save the date for the opening preview : 02.09.2026 from 6 to 9pm, in presence of the artist.

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For their first solo exhibition at EDJI Gallery, Robert Martin presents A Gift of Tears, a new body of work that brings together watercolour, painting and installation in a deeply personal reflection on faith, memory and queer belonging.

The exhibition grew in part from Martin's time in Belgium, where visits to churches, stained glass windows and religious paintings, especially in Ghent, left a strong impression on their visual language. Rather than quoting these references directly, Martin absorbs their atmosphere: the glow of coloured glass, the stillness of devotional images, the emotional weight carried by gold, symmetry and light. These elements enter the work softly, opening a dialogue between sacred imagery and the artist's own world of rural landscapes, animals, folklore and queer histories.

Martin's practice has long been rooted in the representation of queerness within rural America. Their work looks at places often left outside dominant narratives, paying attention to regional culture, inherited stories and the forms of tenderness that survive quietly within these communities. In A Gift of Tears, this attention takes on an almost devotional quality. Queerness is not presented as a statement, but as a presence: something luminous, sometimes hidden, sometimes revealed, moving through animals, landscapes, silhouettes and symbols.

The eight watercolours in the exhibition translate the feeling of stained glass onto paper. Birds, snakes, leaves and other natural forms appear within intricate compositions of colour and line, as if caught between observation and apparition. There is a sense of fragility in the medium, but also of permanence in the structure. Each work feels like an image to be looked through as much as looked at.

The works on panel introduce a quieter, more intimate atmosphere. Figures are placed against glowing sunset skies, their bodies partly held in shadow as warm amber light radiates around them. This luminous setting recalls the gold grounds of Byzantine Christian painting, where light gives the image a sense of sacred presence. The figure is not turned into an icon, but held with the same care and stillness that icons demand.At the centre of the exhibition, two large oil paintings show a wedge of geese in flight, a motif that continues beyond the canvas through seven poles topped with three-dimensional geese, as if the flock were passing through the gallery itself. Their formation becomes a symbol of migration, protection and shared direction, but also of return, endurance and collective care.

A Gift of Tears is an exhibition about the sacred as something intimate rather than distant. In this new body of work, tears are not only signs of sorrow, but gestures of care, memory and devotion. Through them, Martin gives queer presence a quiet, luminous force.