Art Basel Miami Beach 2022
Charlie James Gallery is delighted to present a solo presentation of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez in the Nova section of Art Basel Miami Beach 2022.
For our ABMB presentation, Patrick Martinez has created a new installation of neon works on the main wall of the booth, addressing recent sociopolitical developments here in the US including the Supreme Court ruling on Roe vs. Wade. Patrick’s neon on Plexiglas pieces are fabricated in exactly the same manner as typical street level neon signage. Patrick’s neon forms are mounted to sheets of Plexiglas with transformers installed on a curved lip of Plexiglas at the top. Patrick uses words from oratorical sources, song lyrics, or of his own invention to respond to contemporary cultural and political conditions. The formal unity of the booth, though composed of discrete paintings and neon elements, will impart the immersive experience of an installation, and will locate viewers powerfully in abstracted places from Patrick’s Los Angeles – places decades old, some lost to gentrification, sites of long-standing inhabitation fading from view.
Patrick Martinez is at the vanguard of a movement of BIPOC artists making mixed media paintings in response to their lived environment(s) around East and South Central Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley. Typical in Patrick’s neighborhood are corner stores adorned with murals of various kinds, many containing references to Nahua or Maya mythological forms. Also common are security bars and home-based businesses featuring neon signage addressing motorists and passerby from available windows. Operating in a manner similar to collage, Patrick’s landscape works locate viewers in a particular geographic place with a demonstrable ethnic identity and socio-economic position. These paintings are executed on wood panel and are painted and assembled in layers. There are several layers of clear figuration, each of which is painted over with house paint once complete. Patrick then uses a pressure washer to blast away the house paint, exposing the under-layers of figuration, resulting in the visual suggestion of aging, erosion, and the passage of time. The foundational layers of figuration will frequently display evidence of aerosol paint tags, with subsequent buffs of those tags which are later tagged again, imparting a sense of narrative to the places evoked in the paintings. Atop these multi-layered surfaces Patrick adds neon forms, signature ceramic elements, and found materials such as security bars and tarp signage to complete the compositions. The results are abstracted landscapes that evoke sites in Patrick’s community and their respective timelines - the viewer sees the decades of wear in each surface and feels the vulnerability of each place to change and possible displacement.
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, at venues including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.
Patrick’s work resides in the permanent collections the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Crystal Bridges Musuem of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), the Rubell Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the California African American Museum, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Tucson Museum of Art, the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, the University of North Dakota Permanent Collection, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Crocker Art Museum, the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, the Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, the Rollins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art, among others.
Patrick was awarded a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, FL. In the fall of 2021 Patrick was the subject of a solo museum exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art titled Look What You Created. In 2022 Patrick was awarded a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Patrick is currently exhibiting in We The People: The Radical Notion of Democracy at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art thru January of 2023. In the spring of 2023 Patrick will have a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. Patrick lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.
Venue
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
Opening Hours
Private Days (by invitation only)
Tuesday, November 29, 2022, 11am to 7pm, First Choice VIP cardholders
Tuesday, November 29, 2022, 4pm to 7pm, Preview VIP cardholders
Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 11am to 7pm, First Choice and Preview VIP cardholders
Vernissage (by invitation only)
Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 4pm to 7pm
Public Days
Thursday, December 1, 2022, 11am to 7pm
Friday, December 2, 2022, 11am to 7pm
Saturday, December 3, 2022, 11am to 6pm
Selected Works
installation
