I Come From Everywhere and Everywhere I Go
Lois Lambert Gallery
PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: LA/LA
September 2017
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Supported by grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA takes place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California, from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, and from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.
Darwin Estacio Martinez uses a universally understood visual language to convey unfinished stories as in still images taken from a movie. Darwin takes moments of an embrace, a handshake or other human interactions and zooms in, fragmenting the figures into mysterious compositions in bold color. By doing this the artist shifts the emphasis from the gesture and figure over to the mood or intention of the scene. Martinez’s paintings are deliberately open to interpretation. There is always a general understanding of what is happening in the painting but each painting does not have an assigned meaning. “It’s amazing how for the Cuban people my paintings hide some political statements, and for the French or Italian they relate my work to the world of sexuality”. Darwin’s love of film is reflected in the cinematic quality of his work and the compositions of his paintings. Martinez believes that in pursuing a method that emphasizes the generic, he can capture the fluid nature of identification and transcend national identity. Darwin Estacio Martinez has studied art since childhood. At the age of nine he began attending an elementary art school in Cuba. Martinez received his Masters degree in 2011 from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba. Darwin is currently a professor at La Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in San Alejandro, Cuba. He has been exhibiting his work since 1997, in solo and group exhibits throughout Cuba, Europe, and Boston, MA. Martinez’s work has been shown at Casa Museo, Alejandro de Humboltd in Havana, Cuba and at Staedtischen Museum in Traunstein, Germany.
