Christopher Martin’s This That and the Other (2025, Mixed Media Sculpture) plays with language, direction, and movement, turning text into a sculptural object that occupies both conceptual and physical space.

The work features a vertical white panel pierced by a black arrow, as if shot through with intention, urgency, or fate. On the panel, bold black letters spell out a looping phrase: “THIS THAT AND THE OTHER FROM HERE TO THERE AND BACK AGAIN.” The words read like both instruction and mantra—an endless cycle of shifting focus, movement, and return.

By embedding text with an arrow, Martin literalizes the metaphor of language as a target, while also suggesting the instability of meaning. The phrase, seemingly casual, expands under repetition into a meditation on direction, distraction, and the circularity of human thought. The black-and-white palette emphasizes clarity and impact, leaving no space for ornament—only the immediacy of text, object, and gesture.

In This That and the Other, Martin explores how everyday words can be elevated into objects of reflection. The arrow transforms language into action, forcing the viewer to consider the tension between permanence and motion, randomness and precision. It is a piece about navigation through life’s shifting choices, where words themselves become both the journey and the destination.

15.5 x 6 x 17in
Ink on Paper + Wood Arrow