AMERICA IS FOR DREAMERS

Patrick Martinez (he/him/his) was born in Pasadena, CA in 1980 and holds a BFA from the Art College Center of Design (2015). He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Martinez’s practice moves across hip hop and graffiti aesthetics using everyday urban formal and material vernaculars—neon, stucco, school folders, house paint, spray paint, ceramic tile, oriented strand board (often used in construction), and even cake—to create landscape and portrait paintings, sculptures, and prints that memorialize urban and suburban neighborhood environments, friends, and iconic historical and contemporary social figures. A highly sought after Latinx artist, he has been awarded a Rauschenberg Foundation Artist Residency (2020), an LA Department of Cultural Affairs Cultural Trailblazers award (2019), and a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2019). His work collected by the Autry Museum of the American West, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Museum of Latin American Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

[From Acquisition Rationale, Xuxa Rodríguez, November 2021.]