Narsiso Martinez: Rethinking Essential
Narsiso Martinez: Rethinking Essential
By Gabriela Urtiaga, MOLAA Chief Curator
Between high-impact surfaces and textures, the work of Narsiso Martinez proposes a fundamentally experimental investigation. His paintings and installations begin from a playful approach to materials, mostly simple elements, found in his physical and representative environment. This is a creative approach that is not accidental: there is an intrinsic coherence there, a symbolic closeness between the medium and its content.
In the artist's work we always find something urgent. His investigations, reflections and questions go beyond the limits of the official, through stories that are often silenced or underestimated by the prevailing narrative.
Beneath corrugated folds, he underlays an interest in reclaiming the place of creation as a tool for transformation and social justice, as a banner of a decolonization of the status quo, and the artist as a seeker in the margins, a ragpicker of history.
Martínez's paintings require no explanation. Meditative contemplation alone reveals life stories, many of them from indigenous communities, which the artist has managed to document from various avenues: from his own experiences, through talks and encounters with the actual protagonists in his work. Here, we find the fight of the millions of displaced peoples who struggle against being left out of the established margins, and who defend human dignity in the face of exploitation and helplessness.
The installation that we present here was specially designed for the MOLAA gallery and its subsequent exhibition at ICA San Diego. In addition to the strength of its visual poetics, the exhibition is also a way to raise awareness and propose new conversations on issues that cannot be postponed and that involve us all. Rethink what is essential in a post-pandemic context to build a more dignified future. That's what it's about. Art transforms and can always be the beginning of something better.
By Gabriela Urtiaga, MOLAA Chief Curator
Between high-impact surfaces and textures, the work of Narsiso Martinez proposes a fundamentally experimental investigation. His paintings and installations begin from a playful approach to materials, mostly simple elements, found in his physical and representative environment. This is a creative approach that is not accidental: there is an intrinsic coherence there, a symbolic closeness between the medium and its content.
In the artist's work we always find something urgent. His investigations, reflections and questions go beyond the limits of the official, through stories that are often silenced or underestimated by the prevailing narrative.
Beneath corrugated folds, he underlays an interest in reclaiming the place of creation as a tool for transformation and social justice, as a banner of a decolonization of the status quo, and the artist as a seeker in the margins, a ragpicker of history.
Martínez's paintings require no explanation. Meditative contemplation alone reveals life stories, many of them from indigenous communities, which the artist has managed to document from various avenues: from his own experiences, through talks and encounters with the actual protagonists in his work. Here, we find the fight of the millions of displaced peoples who struggle against being left out of the established margins, and who defend human dignity in the face of exploitation and helplessness.
The installation that we present here was specially designed for the MOLAA gallery and its subsequent exhibition at ICA San Diego. In addition to the strength of its visual poetics, the exhibition is also a way to raise awareness and propose new conversations on issues that cannot be postponed and that involve us all. Rethink what is essential in a post-pandemic context to build a more dignified future. That's what it's about. Art transforms and can always be the beginning of something better.
