Martini sculpts solid whimsy

Key West artist at Westside gallery. Lighthearted in style, but formed of hulking metal.

Walking into the Sandler Hudson Gallery exhibition featuring artist John Martini feels like entering the dismantled remnants of some vintage carnival.

The Key West, Fla., artist’s whimsical sculptures in thick polychrome steel sit around the gallery like component parts from some antique merry-goround or Ferris wheel. Martini’s preferred color palette is a muddied rainbow of reds, yellows, blues and greens. Underlying rust often breaks through the colors to add to the antiquated, weathered feel.

Martini works with remarkably cumbersome, heavy materials, locking his metal pieces together with massive nuts and bolts and anchoring them to the ground on thick metal stands.

His sculptures of fruit bowls, birds both big and small, horses and human figures have a childish, winsome presence that offsets their solidity and heft.

A 7-foot sculpture of “The Mighty Sparrow” is indicative of Martini’s signature whimsical style. The hulking piece features an enormous steel bird walking upright in what could only be described as a saunter, his spindly legs anchored by a thick slab of metal.

Martini’s beguiling sculptures conjure up all manner of visual references, from Picasso to shadow puppets to the graphic, psychedelic work of iconic 1960s artist Peter Max. The silhouette figures are cut out of met- al like sewing patterns so they are essentially flat; Martini adds dimension by sandwiching them into thick layers of metal held together with steel rods.

In addition to his captivating sculptures, Martini offers a series of monoprint portraits, such as “Helga,” of a pensive woman rendered in fat, smudged black strokes with blue eyes and a slash of red lips. These portraits have a vaguely underground comic style related to, but not completely in line with Martini’s sculptures.

Much more successful is a charming suite of brightly colored, graphically simple monoprints whose vivid blues, reds and yellows mimic the palette of his sculptures, as well as compellingly oddball forms.

These abstracted human and animal figures who appear to be grappling with a physically or psychologically challenging world suggest a cross between Spanish surrealist Joan Miro and folk artist Bill Traylor’s humorous, poetically stark drawings.

Humor and a pleasing simplicity in his forms make this solo show on the Westside a real delight.

PHOTOS COURTESY SANDLER HUDSON GALLERY Artist John Martini’s “Take Me Home Country Road” (2011), in polychrome steel, on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta.

Martini’s sculpture, “The Great Swan of Boston” (2011), in polychrome steel.