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Mark Anthony Martinez is a conceptual artist, independent curator and fine arts educator based here in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. Martinez holds a BFA in Intermedia Arts from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (2012) and an MFA in Studio Art from Portland State University (2014). He currently adjuncts at Our Lady of the Lake University, for the Visual arts & New media program (2025 – Present). Through his studio practice, he’s exhibited in numerous group shows locally and nationally, including; The Contemporary at Blue Star, San Antonio, TX (2024), Centro de Artes, San Antonio, TX (2020), The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center Inc., New York, NY (2019), Mexic-Arte in Austin, TX. (2017) and, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, Il. (2014). Martinez has served as Visual Arts Director to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (2015-2017), Gallery Manager for the Michael and Noemi Neidorff Art Gallery at Trinity University (2018), co-curator pop-up space, Fake Gallery (2019), co-director of JANUARY (2023) and currently co-curator to both INTERLOPER GALLERY and the S.M.A.R.T. Project Space; respective visual arts incubators within the “1906 Studio.”
Resume (PDF)
Work Samples (PDF)
Flesh wound, foamboard cut out, photo credit Luis M. Garza, 2016
No New White Friends, photo credit Andrea Rampone, 2017
I DID IT TO MYSELF, install view, photo credit Luis Garza, 2023
POV WINNING, install view, photo credit Carlos Ferrand, 2024
I'M NOT A COWBOY..., install view, photo credit Carlos Ferrand, 2024
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Type: Media Arts: Media/Visual Communications, New Media/Technology; Multi-Disciplinary: Multiple Art Forms; Teaching Artist/Instructor; Visual Arts: Mixed Media Artist, Printmaker
Artist Style: Teaching Artist/Instructor: Group Instruction, Guest Speaker, Instruction for Adults, Private Lessons, Workshop Presenter; Visual Art: Abstract, Assemblage, Collage, Conceptual, Contemporary, Environmental, Experimental, Figurative, Focus on Color/Light/Movement, Icongraphic/Iconoclastic, Illustrative, Interactive, Landscape/Cityscape, Minimalism, Political, Pop, Representational, Site-Specific, Social Commentary
Artist Medium: Acrylic; Collage; Computer; Drawing Media; Light/Neon; Photography; Watercolor; Video
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
Artist Statement : As an artist my work contends with the generational anxieties I hold about contemporary US society as a millennial. To address the overwhelming nature of these concerns, I regularly employ self-portraiture, text and sculpture within my practice. Moreover, my work tackles generational anxieties about the mythologies we, as millennials of color, grew up with.
As a member of this generation, I feel we were sold progress but all we’ve seemed to inherit is precarity. And while there are exceptions, there is still much anxiety caused by overwhelming inequity — even in the stories we tell ourselves.
As an artist, I often collaborate with other creatives within our community to extend the bounds of my personal studio in order to share these anxieties. I've collaborated with the neon based artist, "King of Neon", to produce neon text based works originally featured at the Mexic-Arte Museum (2017). As well as having worked with local Video Game Developer, Fred Wood, for the interactive component of my solo exhibition "I'M NOT A COWBOY..." (2024). To specifically address the mythologies based on how the west was won. Mythologies that run at odds with the genealogies of otherness – especially in the case of the Mexican-American.
At the same time, as an artist, I cannot help but point to the things, institutions and myths; that not only consume our resources but pit us against one another and ultimately rob us of our personhood.
