Leslie Martinez: The Secrecy of Water

January 20 - March 12,2023

From the Blaffer Art Museum: "The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is proud to present the first solo museum exhibition of work by the Dallas-based artist Leslie Martinez. Martinez (they/them/their) creates immersive, spellbinding paintings that explore ideas of place, climate, landscape, and personhood through unconventional methods of applying and interlaying various materials, textures, and hues on canvas. Their signature style of abstract painting features viscerally tactile and spatial atmospheres created with physical ingredients like fabric rags, recycled clothing, and crushed stone that reveal discordant visual intersections of destruction and emergence. Born in the Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexico border, Martinez frequently traveled to and from their birthplace to Dallas. The ten-hour journey required crossing one of the deadliest Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints in the United States. Their encounters in this borderland space guided their interests in considering how racist and xenophobic perceptions of belonging and exclusion relate to the structures of existence for queer and trans peoples, as well as ideas of shapeshifting and coding necessary for survival.     This exhibition is organized by Tyler Blackwell, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Art Museum and former Cynthia Woods Mitchell Associate Curator at Blaffer Art Museum.  

On View: January 20, 2023 | 12-5 pm

Blaffer Art Museum 120 University of Houston Fine Arts Building
Houston, TX 77204-4018
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