Ghost Land
Patrick Martinez
Patrick Martinez’s most ambitious and expansive presentation to date, Ghost Land will feature a large-scale sculptural installation.
Ghost Land pays homage to urban landscapes lost and destroyed. Patrick Martinez unearths stories of resilience and solidarity in the face of rapid gentrification, speaking to the realities of displaced communities across California and beyond. Excavating overlapping histories embedded in specific materials, he exposes complicated truths behind the romanticization of California. Erased, eroded, and ruined details throughout Ghost Land capture not just the passage of time but ongoing personal, civic, and cultural loss. Like graffiti that still remains after attempts to erase it, this exhibition is a testament to what endures, what refuses to be forgotten.
Date
September 23, 2023–January 7, 2024
PATRICK MARTINEZ
IMAGE
Patrick Martinez, Serpents (Welcome to the Jungle), 2022
Stucco, neon, mean streak, ceramic, acrylic paint, spray paint, latex house paint, ceramic tile and tile adhesive on panel
72 x 144 x 5 inches
Courtesy the artist and White Cube
Photography: JW Pictures
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Ghost Land Installation view, 2023 Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography
Patrick Martinez lives and works in Los Angeles. Dedicated to speaking out against urgent racial and socioeconomic injustice, his practice is broad and includes landscape paintings, “cake” paintings, neon installations, and his series appropriating vintage Pee Chee folders. Central to Ghost Land is a newly commissioned large-scale sculpture, Martinez’s first landscape in the round.
Dogpatch Community Court rendering. Photo courtesy of artist
Photo courtesy of the Warriors Community Foundation
Photo courtesy of the Warriors Community Foundation
Photo courtesy of the Warriors Community Foundation
Photo courtesy of the Warriors Community Foundation
Photo courtesy of the Warriors Community Foundation
Artist Patrick Martinez is dedicated to honoring and uplifting Black and Brown youth in California. His paintings reference vintage Pee-Chee folders, transforming the popular school supplies into protests against violence, displacement, and racial injustice. Martinez created this mural in the style of his Pee-Chee series to celebrate graduates from Alive & Free’s violence prevention and leadership programs.
This project is presented by The Warriors Community Foundation, ICA SF, and Alive & Free. The basketball court is located 400 ft south of the museum between 923 and 947 Minnesota street.
Mural artwork by Patrick Martinez.
Painted by Bay Area Mural Program (BAMP).
From the Eoyang-Reddig family to Dogpatch.
In honor of Stephen Jackson.
Generous support for Ghost Land is provided by lead sponsors Kayleen Arnke and Stuart Parmenter, Wayee Chu and Ethan Beard, and Pamela and David Hornik; exhibition partners Kim and Keith Allen Niesen, Wendy West and Andrew May, and the Golden State Warriors; and the ICA SF Founding Donors.
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980 Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.
Patrick’s work resides in the permanent collections the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Rubell Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the California African American Museum, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Tucson Museum of Art, the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, the University of North Dakota Permanent Collection, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Crocker Art Museum, the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, the Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, the Rollins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art, among others.
Patrick was awarded a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, FL. In the fall of 2021 Patrick was the subject of a solo museum exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art titled Look What You Created. In 2022 Patrick was awarded a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Patrick recently exhibited in We The People: The Radical Notion of Democracy at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art thru January 2023. Patrick lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.
Find exhibition insights, audio content, and more by viewing our free exhibition guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app. Plan your visit, explore our exhibitions on site, and then dive deeper into your favorite works at home—or anywhere, anytime!
