Santa Monica’s Building Bridges Art Exchange Presents: J.J. Martin’s “Role Models”

Santa Monica’s Building Bridges Art Exchange Presents: J.J. Martin’s “Role Models”

A touring exhibit in partnership with Indianilla Cultural Center, Mexico Town and Authentic de Catorce Cultural Centre, Actual de Catorce, Mexico, Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

By Sam Catanzaro

Constructing Bridges Artwork Exchange continues to cultivate a assorted art scene, after once again bringing tradition and significant do the job to its Santa Monica place, which has turn into a mainstay for the two the local neighborhood and the higher LA artwork world. With its most current clearly show, J.J. Martin’s “Role Types,” the museum and curator Marisa Caicholo convey the touring present (on watch by way of August 6) from the Mexican artist to their faithful and curious neighborhood. 

As an artist whose own everyday living and potent drive to provide some others has constantly been at the coronary heart of his get the job done, he has invested his lifestyle and profession looking for ways to meaningfully influence other people. This journey led him and his spouse to undertake four children, switching all of their lives for the superior. Inside this process, Martin professional a turning place, in which he and his lover turned position types, the two to his family and in the LGBTQ+ local community as a whole. 

“As an artist, I am incredibly grateful for the chance Making Bridges has presented me listed here in the town of Santa Monica. To be able to share my newest project with the neighborhood has been an honor. I have been doing work on this task for the past 5 decades all through the pandemic and it demonstrates my potent motivation to serve other people, as my heart has always been at the heart of my artwork. I hope this exhibition encourages guests to re-imagine about peace and transforms them into part designs on their own,” Martin explained to the Santa Monica Mirror

This realization fascinated Martin, driving him towards this current collection. Within these performs, Martin displays on the point out of the existing speedy-paced earth, the place most people today are focused on the pursuit of achievements and material gains and where the failure to satisfy society’s expectations can have devastating consequences on an individual’s daily life on a actual physical, social and financial degree. He researched the stories of Nobel Prize winners whose exemplary conduct and life proven them as job styles in the eyes of typical citizens, notably the youthful generations, in the end choosing to element renowned politicians these types of as Barack Obama or Al Gore, activists like Rigoberta Menchú, Liu Xiaobo, Malala Yousafzai, and other influential figures.

Martin’s new overall body of operate is composed of substantial-scale portraits painted against backgrounds of various intensity and a subseries entitled “Mandalas,” established with the intention of combining the principle of “Role Models” with the notion of healing culture in a put up-COVID planet. In pursuit of this, he deconstructed each portray from the part design sequence and designed a mandala with the distinct parts, each individual a person an overall universe of emotions and healing. Alongside with this deconstructing of job styles on classic canvases, J.J. Martin also invites men and women to enter into an immersive experience —specially ready for the sample— which recreates the working experience of visible meditations with mandalas employing his artwork.

“Each form, line or shade represents sure elements of the deconstructed part model, a extremely exclusive principle of design, projection and visual symbolism of every little thing that I am trying to complete in my possess lifetime or even, in specified conditions, to signify the impermanence of human daily life.”

Martin is a Mexican artist now residing and doing the job in between Mexico City and Los Angeles. His do the job, which depicts contemporary-wanting figures, is an strategy to the portrait. For his protagonists in each and every portrait, he employs designs that he finds in everyday everyday living or who are extracted from his creativity. Every single protagonist functions as a visible illustration of an absence or existence. 

His use of huge format canvases, will allow him to make use of his fantastic technique, deploy his concepts, and show his official and aesthetic expression. He attracts and paints his characters on a neutral background, in order to not distract the viewer, and letting them to focus on the major things.

Setting up Bridges Artwork Trade, proven in 2005 by Marisa Caichiolo, the gallery was made as a system that allows artists from throughout the globe to link, interact in tranquil dialogue, and develop narratives that investigate political troubles and social movements which impression different locations of the planet. Yrs later, Building Bridges Art Exchange continues to make and sustain associations with cultural ministries, museums and other establishments, giving artists all more than the environment the chance to openly discover and impact social and political concerns in today’s entire world. 

“Our present space in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Arts Centre presents rotating exhibitions from close to the globe, artist residencies, as very well as lectures, and workshops as component of our academic program. In the nations the place we ship exhibitions, we encourage landscape interventions and performances that have interaction with the community communities. Variety is at the main of our organizational values,” the Exchange mentioned. 

Developing Bridges Artwork Trade is situated at Bergamot Santa Monica, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Device F2. It is open Tuesday – Friday, 11:30am – 5pm & Saturday, 12 – 6pm.