"If I can do this many paintings of it, it's a problem."

September 20, 2016 9:37 AM

Artist Patrick Martinez memorializes victims of police violence by way of vintage school supplies.

From the article:

The week is memorialized in images that reference the illustrations on those old folders. In the top left corner, there's a portrait of Castile. "It's hard to watch that video," says Martinez of the footage that Castile's girlfriend, who, along with their young daughter was in the car at the time of the shooting, had broadcast via Facebook. "I kind of wanted to do him a solid and paint his portrait in the top left." In the top right corner, Villaneuva sits on the bed of a pick-up truck holding a guitar, as he did in a photo that accompanied news reporting of his death. Underneath that, Martinez recreated the image of Sterling shot by an officer. Along the bottom, he painted police scenes from Dallas.

posted by Sara C. (5 comments total)

Marinez's website is worth checking out. His other work is also pretty great. These, including the photos of kids holding them, are great, and this guy is going places.

This guy is now one of two straight-up painters' work I can think of that "matters" and the other is Kehinde Wiley. And I think it says something that they're working on a lot of the same ideas.
posted by cmoj at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2016

Fuck. That's effective political art.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:07 AM on September 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Wow. Chilling and amazing. Thank you so much for the post.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:52 AM on September 20, 2016

I saw this guy's stuff via his gallerist, showing at the Seattle Art Fair about two months ago. They had one full size painting up and a sampling of the printed Pee-Chees. Standing in front of the work, I started reciting the names of the people depicted that I remembered from coverage, both journalsitic and social media. I probably only named maybe ten people, maybe a third of the people depicted. It was very effective and unsettling.
posted by mwhybark at 12:41 PM on September 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Something that did not occur to me at the time but does now is that there's a thread to Raymond Pettibon's early work - cops, cheerleaders, high school, Southern California. I mean this guy's stuff comes from a different place but there are definite commonalities.
posted by mwhybark at 12:50 PM on September 20, 2016