MAURO MARTINEZ

published by EUTOPIA: Contemporary Art Review || July 2, 2016

Mauro Martinez
In The Event of A Water Landing
Oil on canvas [2016]

Anchored by a fractured protagonist lost in a Bacon-esque pretense of depth, Martinez establishes a familiarity of painting as angst reflector. The ruptured figure in this delicatessen of discontent dissolves amidst a riot of graphic and painterly styles generating a necessary confusion: a frenetic saccadic movement. Familiar fragments of cautionary travel symbols quasi-pleading for pseudo-safety amplify this visual unsettling, generating a malcontent nausea. Declaring the distress of the physical flâneur (damn the static Internet voyeur) recalls the painful physicality required for painting and cultural absorption, a discomfiting reminder of our existential anxiety mirrored by corporeal un-belonging.

~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of the artist