ArtPace,
Mar 23, 2005 - May 08, 2005
San Antonio, Tx, USA
Artpace: New Works: 05.1
by Elaine Wolff
The image that opens "A Meditation" is an enlarged photograph taken just after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. For viewers over the age of 30, it is likely to feel familiar even if the exact subject matter is elusive. Fear, remorse, and a sense of foreboding are triggered by the ’60s-era police officers and women’s fashions, the flat Texas sky and grass. "It’s so Duchampian," Martinez said to Zamudio Taylor before the opening; the references are multilayered. The image isn’t just an object; it’s a trigger, or a symbol, for a shared story that we repeat to ourselves and that forms part of our collective memory. In a Democratic society that abandoned its pretensions to social democracy in that tumultuous decade, the myth of JFK and his assassination - the responsibility for which is still hotly contested - forms the cornerstone for competing ideologies - an ongoing battle that ties back in to the bracing revolt underway in the adjacent room. To convert an image from that cataclysmic event into an art object is to acknowledge and question the power that the emotional domain of imagery still exercises in our "advanced" society, in which it is often a stand-in for complicated texts or verbal debate. Martinez has delineated the tension between two truisms, "photography lies," and "a picture is worth a thousand words," at a time when making that distinction is as important as it ever was.
Returning to the thick white surfaces for a moment, as the gallery notes mention it’s impossible not to think of Robert Ryman’s thick, monochromatic paintings, but with his surfaces Martinez has created mirrors rather than statements. Their matte surfaces diffuse direct vision, so that it takes an effort to approach them critically and see the fissures and pockmarks that have developed in the plaster-like pigment, in the same way that ideology and identity radiate a bright integrated whole that discourages dissection.
If Martinez is constructing a global analysis of identity and ideology, Ortiz has created a life-size diorama of community-reinforced self. Accordingly, where Martinez’ installation is icily liberating, Ortiz’ is warm, lulling, and claustrophobic. It’s possible to interpret "but still i’d leap in front of a flyin’ bullet for you" as a love song to the backyard barbeques, ice-house culture, and rollercoaster love affairs romanticized by San Antonio’s Latino and arts communities. But "I’ll never learn," is plastered across posters on the walls and in a video; it’s burned into the wooden rack of a barbeque pit. "Soy un boring lover," is the other dominant slogan, popping up between images of the devil girl who recurs in Ortiz’s work and emphasizes the individual’s struggle with habitual behavior - behavior that is either lauded or decried depending on one’s membership in various subcultures. Ortiz’ alter ego fumbles his way through the video "Spaztek finds his heart burning in the parking lot," in which our hero identifies his broken heart with a pile of burning tires, the universal urban symbol for social anarchy and failure. The words "necio," meaning foolish, and "pendejo" (idiot), are spelled out in block letters on either side of the contained space in the middle of the floor. As a whole, the installation is a powerful evocation of the human conundrum in which self-destructive behavior is also inextricably linked to the identity that gives life meaning.
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