Excavations of Recent History

Patrick Martinez is a multidisciplinary artist who creates works that act as excavations of language, belonging, and the visual-cultural systems of the city of Los Angeles, in order to create dialogues concerning the ongoing residue of gentrification. Throughout his practice, he uses materials and modes of address recognizable within neighborhoods that face the threat of removal and erasure—neon signage, birthday cakes, security fences, ceramic roses, and various ephemera unearthed from a rapidly changing city. Martinez’s works counteract forgetting and its effects by elevating historical figures, figures from hip-hop culture, and people who may not have conventional recognition, including those who have succumbed to the injustices of police brutality and immigration policies. In this talk, he will share works from multiple intersections of his practice, with an emphasis on sculptural paintings, figurative works, and how they support the possibility of sending direct messages to communities.

Bio

Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Patrick Martinez’s L.A. suburban upbringing and his diverse cultural background (Filipino, Mexican and Native American), provided him with a unique lens through which he interprets his surroundings. Influenced by the Hip Hop movement, Martinez cultivated his art practice through graffiti, which later led him to the Art Center College of Design, where he earned a BFA with honors in 2005. Through his facility with a wide variety of media (painting, neon, ceramic and sculpture), Martinez colorfully scrutinizes otherwise everyday realities of suburban and urban life in L.A. with humor, sensitivity and wit. Martinez’s work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York and the Netherlands, and he has shown in venues including the Vincent Price Art Museum, Biola University, LA Louver, Showroom MAMA, Providence College Galleries, MACLA, SUR biennial, Chinese American Museum, LACMA, and Euphrat Museum of Art. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, KPCC, KCRW, Fusion, Art News, Opening Ceremony Art Blog and Wired. Martinez has work in the collections of Crocker Art Museum, Cornell Fine Art Museum, the Pizzuti Collection, and the Museum of Latin American Art. Martinez was recently awarded a Rauschenbeg Residency and he currently has work in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today exhibition. Martinez lives and works in Los Angeles.

For more information about the lecture, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu.

For more information about the artist, visit: http://www.patrickmartinez.com/

Presented by the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice.