Patrick Martinez

Working at the intersection of painting and sculpture, Patrick Martinez makes artworks that draw on the visual particularities of East Los Angeles. His walls made of cinder block enlivened by graffiti and neon directly reference the community’s vernacular architecture and the palimpsests, or layered mark-making, found on the surfaces of city streets. But more than depicting place, Martinez uses these familiar forms to comment on social, economic, and political realities and draw them into a narrative that stretches far into the past. These structures function as vehicles for storytelling, underscoring histories of displacement, gentrification, and cultural survival. Imagery borrowed from Maya murals seems to peek out from beneath commercial signage and peeling layers of paint. Unfolding slowly with visual complexity, these works argue that the past belongs to the present. Martinez’s neon signs speak the urgent language of advertising. Rather than selling this product or that service, however, they advocate for human rights and justice: “Agua is Life; NO ICE.”

Patrick Martinez was born in 1980 in Pasadena, California. He makes paintings, reliefs, and sculptural installations from architectural materials such as ceramic tiles, cinder blocks, neon, window-security bars, and vinyl signs that mirror the urban landscape and visual culture of Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Dallas Contemporary (2024); Rubell Museum, Miami (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2023); Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles (2022, 2018); Tucson Museum of Art (2021); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI (2021); Arlene Schnitzer Gallery, Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles (2020); Fort Gansevoort, New York (2019); and the Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College, Monterey Park, CA (2017). Recent group exhibitions include the Boston Public Art Triennial (2025); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024, 2023); Palo Alto Art Center, CA (2024); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2024, 2022); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2024); Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Portland State University, OR (2024); The Broad, Los Angeles (2023); Brooklyn Museum (2023); Riverside Art Museum, CA (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ (2023); Long Beach Museum of Art, CA (2022); and El Museo del Barrio, New York (2021). He participated in the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, New Smyrna Beach, FL (2022); Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, New York (2020); and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, Los Angeles (2019). Martinez earned a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA (2005).