Pow Martinez’s latest exhibition at Mo_Space reminds us yet again of how he has become the ‘new medievalist’ of our time. Resorting to a new form of ‘dark age’ within the technocratic digital realm, he leaves naturalism behind, reflecting the tastes of the barbarians who were once swayed by Christendom and now—by virtue signaling and moralist gaffes. His art, although many times described as unrefined, outsider, and childlike, ironically poses as significant commentary against the vicious cycles of alienation and imperialization, and as a symbolic chronicle of the lingering values and absurd preoccupations of our society.

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Deciding to name his show after a famous monologue by Al Pacino’s character, who played the devil in the film, The Devil’s Advocate, Martinez paints scenes that are incredibly familiar, while filled with coarse and callow images that reverberate an impish presence. But maybe the devil is indeed between the details. For within these seemingly caricatured themes, lay an astoundingly overt message of re-functioning archaic ideals—that are so literal that they seem to mystify themselves behind their crass ‘literalness.’

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For example, in a painting called, ‘Be Right Or Die Bad,’ Martinez revels in the prosaic narratives of epiphanies and apparitions. It’s a scene where one could literally see the ‘hand of god’ among other sentient characters beneath who have seemingly undergone a prophetic transformation from disbelief to faith. He paints them like there is a message that is bestowed upon it—and that this message should be clear. Which is very similar to the way artisans painted and made their images during the spread of Christianity and its scriptures. The parables and miracles had to be made known, foremost, to a wide population of illiterate philistines. And the artists who were tasked to do them were barbarians themselves, who were used to merely painting the symbols and patterns of other pagan religions. Hence, the decline from the wondrous and intricate naturalism of the Greco-Romans. Hence, how the moniker ‘Dark Ages’ was quickly assigned.

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The Byzantine and Medieval painters didn’t mind the flatness or the lack of depth and realism in their paintings. There was just a story to tell, which trumped everything. In the same vein, Pow Martinez puts the premium in his narratives. And he would paint them with complete disregard to the values and rules of classical art. He would ‘syncretize’ these new scriptures of our times with his own barbaric response against the status quo of image-making. He paints, as if going further—and beyond the flatness and crudeness of the early pagans and natives who were seen as primitive—and makes a complete, opposite turn into the direction of basic, irreverent, and elementary figures of the new ‘digital age.’ 

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In terms of internet speak, Martinez’s works would be the direct result if memes were turned into objects. Outside the digital sphere and into the real, tactile world, his images seem to embody the vulgar/absurd moments across memes that try to poke fun against the normalization of certain values. Martinez is convinced, after all, that what he is merely trying to do is to produce objects, and nothing more. The painting-as-object approach sheds new meaning to his works as archival in themselves. As a recording instrument of our own absurdities and naivetes. So instead of paintings, he offers a kind of reliquary or remembrance, that functions as a container for our hallowed idiocies. 

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Pow Martinez’s art represents our accidental return to decadence. His manner of painting—using impasto, impulsive, and inchoate strokes applied in bright colors suggest an innocence, but only through expression.  For there is, simultaneously, an irreverent take on the significance of culture, as his subjects appear to be deliberate representations of the uncouth and unrefined, and are often depicted in silly or graphically obscene poses. This is where innocence and irreverence collide. Like his characters—marked by round, empty, and bewildered eyes, we also find ourselves interested, yet completely aghast with the way these objects undermine the assumptions we developed on the sophisticated nature of ‘painting.’ And after all the pondering, we become finally convinced of the accuracy of its representation: I am nothing but a crude moment in this world.

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/CLJ

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