LOS ANGELES, CA.- BLUM is presenting Homework, Brooklyn-based artist Eddie Martinez’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
Completed at a compact and intimate scale, the paintings on cardboard that comprise Homework function for Martinez as visual journal entries from recent years. Beginning to work in this fashion in 2017, the artist started creating these diaristic vignettes as an alternative to the large-scale canvases he had become most known for. As this portable fusion of drawing and painting grew into a regular practice, Martinez found that the format was one he could turn to in moments of transition—whether at home with his family (and an abundance of shipping boxes during the pandemic in 2020) or, more recently, amid work-related travel.
Innovating beyond mere mimesis of floral arrangements or butterflies, for example, the originative works in this show utilize mixed media such as Sharpie, acrylic, or colored pencil to great poetic effect. Deploying these universal symbols or autobiographical forms as spatial guides and timeless art historical analogies, Martinez uses his representational elements as trojan horses to draw the viewer’s eye to the sturdy brushstrokes and striking abstractions contained therein. Close inspection reveals an abundance of joyful gestures of varying weight and media—block colors of paint play off delicately drawn lines to recall the conditions of their own making and the artist’s hand.
A key facet of all the works presented here are the handmade artist’s frames on which Martinez often continues his compositions. Behaving as extensions of these paintings—rather than calling attention to their boundaries—each frame metaphorically signals to its viewer how the making of these works stretches beyond the bounds of Martinez’s studio practice and into his everyday life. The exhibition’s title is another indicator of this same idea, with Homework referencing both the standard task of students and the paintings that Martinez made in his home during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Made between 2020 and 2024, Homework sees Martinez through a global moment of vicissitude and eventual return to an altered state of normalcy. Each utilizing distinctly different palettes, subject matter, and media, these works hint at being confessional—prompting inquisitions in the viewer as to what points of inspiration or circumstances might have enacted changes between one vignette and the next. Always playing by his own rules, in Homework, Martinez pivots from black and white to color or abstraction to figuration, though, maintains his effervescent style and obvious fervor for artistic expansion.
Eddie Martinez (b. 1977, Groton Naval Base, CT) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Martinez’s works has been the subject of numerous institutional solo shows, including Buflies, Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, New York (2024); Nomader, curated by Alison M. Gingeras, Pavilion of the Republic of San Marino, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2024); To Be Continued, Space K, Seoul, South Korea (2024); Fast Eddie, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2019); Open Feast, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2019), White Outs, Bronx Museum of Arts, Bronx, New York (2018); and Studio Wall, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2017). His works are represented in international public collections including the Aurora Museum, Shanghai, China; Bronx Museum of Arts, Bronx, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA; Marciano Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Morgan Library, New York, NY; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Saatchi Collection, London, UK; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others.
