Patrick Martinez – Mentoring Artist Talk

Presentation followed by Q & A. Free and open to all via Zoom. Click here for Zoom Registration.

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.

Patrick Martinez is largely known for mixed media “landscape” paintings, neon sign sculptures, and memorial/Pee Chee paintings. The landscape works are abstractions composed of working-class Los Angeles surface content, e.g. distressed stucco, spray paint, street level commercial signage, ceramic tile and flowers, neon, etc. These works serve to evoke place and to unearth sites of personal, civic and cultural loss. Collectively, the paintings bear the imprint of excavation, as if from amidst ruins – recalling the lives of the displaced and the aftermaths of struggle, with socio-economics a steady point of emphasis. Patrick’s neon sign sculptures are fabricated in the same manner and style as those found in any LA street- level business, but his are remixed to deliver messages of resilience and warnings against complacency, with source material drawn from literary and oratorical sources. The acrylic on panel Cake paintings serve to memorialize leaders and thinkers whose work resonates strongly today, while the Pee Chee paintings memorialize victims of police brutality.

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, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul 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 and Euphrat Museum of Art. He has been covered by the Los Angeles Times, KPCC, KCRW, Fusion, Art News, Opening Ceremony Art Blog and Wired. He has work in the collections of LACMA, Crocker Art Museum, Cornell Fine Art Museum, the Pizzuti Collection, and the Museum of Latin American Art. Patrick lives and works in Los Angeles.