Eddie Martinez: White Outs Comes to Bronx Museum Of The Arts, Today

The Bronx Museum of the Arts is pleased to present White Outs, an exhibition by artist Eddie Martinez, which will be on view November 14, 2018 through February 17, 2019. Widely recognized for his large-scale paintings, Martinez has built a consistent body of work over the last decade, successfully merging the tradition of American abstract painting with the energy of the street. These paintings began as Sharpie drawings, then were blown-up, silkscreened, and painted over in a careful, yet unfailingly dynamic, process of layering and expansion. In these new works, created especially for this exhibition, Martinez introduces a new element to his process-the "whiting out" of parts of the composition. It is a move that represents a significant turning point in his career.

Erasure has been an important practice since the origins of art. X-rays of paintings by old masters, for example, often reveal ghostly images underneath. But what might have originated from necessity evolved into an effect often referred to as pentimento, and in 1953 became a celebrated trope when Robert Rauschenberg transformed a drawing by Willem De Kooning by blurring its lines.

The idea of whiting-out, or erasing portions of a composition, might come with connotations of destruction or defacement, but not so with Martinez. The artist regards the act of removing or obliterating painted elements not as an end in itself, but as an integral part of the process of creating a painting-a constructive, rather than destructive, act. He is aware of how reductive the process of building an image can be, whether abstractly in the brain, or physically in the studio.

The works in White Outs were inspired by the shapes and compositions formed on walls that have been painted over with mismatched hues that seem to take on a life and form of their own. The process in his studio follows a similar evolution, as the artist continuously looks for those points of resistance in the work to inform and guide the process forward.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts will release an exhibition catalog around Eddie Martinez's show, with an essay by Frieze Magazine's Associate Editor Evan Moffitt.

Eddie Martinez: White Outs has been organized by Antonio Sergio Bessa in collaboration with Eddie Martinez.

ABOUT Eddie Martinez Born in 1977 in Groton, Connecticut, Eddie Martinez currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

ABOUT ANTONIO SERGIO BESSA As the director of curatorial programs at the Bronx Museum, Antonio Sergio Bessa has organized several exhibitions including Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (2017) with Jessamyn Fiore, Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015) with Yasmin Ramirez, Joan Semmel: The Lucid Eye (2013), and Paulo Bruscky: Art is our Last Hope (2013). A concrete poetry scholar, he is also the author of Öyvind Fahlström: The Art of Writing (2008), and has edited volumes including Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos (2007), Mary Ellen Solt: Towards a Theory of Concrete Poetry (2010), and Paulo Bruscky: Viva Poesia / Poesia Viva (2015).

ABOUT THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS The Bronx Museum of the Arts is an internationally recognized cultural destination that presents innovative contemporary art exhibitions and education programs and is committed to promoting cross-cultural dialogues for diverse audiences. Since its founding in 1971, the Museum has played a vital role in the Bronx by helping to make art accessible to the entire community and connecting with local schools, artists, teens, and families through its robust education initiatives. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the Museum implemented a universal free admission policy, supporting its mission to make arts experiences available to all audiences. The Museum's collection comprises over 1,000 modern and contemporary artworks in all media and highlights works by artists of African, Asian, and Latin American ancestry, as well as artists for whom the Bronx has been critical to their development. Located on the Grand Concourse, the Museum's home is a distinctive contemporary landmark designed by the internationally recognized firm Arquitectonica.

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