Pow Martinez: Underground spiritual unit Exhibition: 25th February – 9th April, 2022
Opening: Friday 25th February, from 7 to 9pm. Yusto Giner Gallery, C/ Barquillo 25, 28004 Madrid.
The Yusto / Giner Gallery presents the first individual exhibition of Pow Martinez in its space in Madrid.
In Underground spiritual unit, Pow Martinez shows for the first time in Spain a collection of canvases that resume the main principles of his production: figurative compositions linked to expressionism and to the relationship between human and their natural and social environment. An enigmatic painting generated from the combination of everyday elements and the wilderness. This mixture, far from seeming remote, gives to his work a complete pictorial and narrative entity.
About the artist:
Pow Martinez’s (b. 1983; lives and works in Manila, Philippines) paintings belie their
grotesque subject matter with the indelibly beautiful surfaces and a wide-ranging, daring
use of color. Mutants, monsters, demons, deviants, and freaks lurch, sit, and appear to
transform amidst weirdly lit landscapes or disintegrating urban scenarios, or emerge from a
painterly graffito mess, but, as his more abstracted works insist, Martinez’ ability to render
intriguing relationships between forms and surfaces ensure his works are endlessly
compelling—an experience akin to a beautiful nightmare.
Martinez is a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards for his exhibition 1 Billion Years at West
Gallery, Philippines. He exhibits internationally and has worked with different media,
including sound. His recent exhibitions include City Prince/sses (2019) at Palais de Tokyo
in Paris; 50 Years in Hollywood (2019) at Pinto Art Museum in New
York; WASAK! Reloaded (2016) in Arndt, Singapore; and WASAK! (2016) in Arndt, Berlin.
Martinez has also held a number of solo shows in major galleries in Manila, the most recent
of which is Sustainable Anxiety (2020) in SILVERLENS. Early in 2018, Martinez had his first
solo exhibition in Indonesia. Titled Aesthetic Police, the exhibition is an outcome of his
month- long residency program at OPQRStudio in Bandung.