Portfolio of twelve documentary photographic prints
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Painting and Printmaking is pleased to announce “Field notes from South Los Angeles; this world is a fleshless one where madness, love and heretics are all I know,” a portfolio of twelve documentary photographic prints by artist Daniel Joseph Martinez.
The print portfolio has been published by the VCUarts Painting and Printmaking Department. The printer on the project was VCU’s Professor Holly J. Morrison in collaboration with Arnold Joseph Kemp, department chair. The edition is available in a custom clamshell boxed edition designed by the artist in collaboration with John deMerritt Bookbinding, Emeryville, California. Fifty percent of the edition is being sold to support scholarships for the Painting and Printmaking Department at VCUarts. The entire series is currently featured in Martinez’s solo exhibition at Roberts & Tilton Gallery, Los Angeles, and a portion of the edition will be on view in the gallery’s booth at the Armory Show, March 6–9, 2014, in New York City.
Martinez’s series of photographs was taken between 2010–2013 in the artist’s neighborhood of Leimert Park, bordered by West Adams and Baldwin Hills, in South Los Angeles. Martinez chose to document the state of hyper-gentrification taking place in the neighborhood. In the spirit of the May 1968 events in Paris, Martinez’s graffiti onto the site of particular buildings makes political and poetic commentaries in response to the surrounding conditions and unfolding politics affecting the local community. The series is a mix of both documentation of the neighborhood’s political voice within the current socio-economic conditions of the country as well as performative interventions by Martinez onto the facades of the changing urban environment.
Daniel Joseph Martinez’s work is in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Martinez was included in the Aperto exhibition at the 1993 Venice Biennale and two Whitney Biennials, in 2008 and 1993. Martinez’s work has been the subject of four monographs to date, including the monumental retrospective monograph published by Hatje Cantz in 2009. Martinez represented the United States in the American pavilion in the 2006 Cairo Biennial, and was included in the 2007 Moscow Biennial, and the 2010 La Biennale de Quebec, Quebec City.
Martinez currently lives and works in Los Angeles, where he is Professor of Theory, Practice, and Mediation of Contemporary Art at the University of California, Irvine; he teaches in the Graduate Studies Program and the New Genres Area. In 2014 Martinez is scheduled for a project with MoMA, New York.
The Department of Painting and Printmaking, a national leader in visual arts education, features an intellectually diverse program that embraces the field’s historical precedents and forges innovative pathways in teaching and research—engaging hybrid forms of learning with appropriate technology. The publication of Martinez’s print edition is the beginning of a new initiative that supports Virginia Commonwealth University in its quest for distinction. This inaugural print edition from the Department of Painting and Printmaking will be followed by one by artist Chris Johanson.
According to US News and World Report, the Graduate Printmaking program at VCU is now ranked # 1 and VCU is the #1 public university fine arts and design program in the country.
For inquiries:
Arnold J. Kemp: [email protected]
Chair & Associate Professor, Painting + Printmaking, School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University
