Using a cosmic palette based on the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) color model, Leslie Martinez sprays and stains canvases with diluted paint, and then folds, pools, and collages materials onto the surface—including rags and dried acrylics. Combining a no-waste approach with methodologies of rasquachismo, a term coined by scholar Tomás Ybarra-Fausto to describe a Chicano “attitude rooted in resourcefulness yet mindful of stance and style,” Martinez wields an embodied way of painting that draws on formal legacies of abstraction, as well as generational practices of survival and sustenance learned from their family.
Leslie Martinez (b. 1985, McAllen, Texas), who lived in New York City for fifteen years before returning to Texas in 2019, exhibited their largest body of work to date in Leslie Martinez: The Fault of Formation at MoMA PS1 in 2023. They have had solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston; and And Now, Dallas. Martinez has participated in residencies at Denniston Hill, Woodbridge; Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Dallas and Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. They are the recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship. Martinez’s work is in the collections of Dallas Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Speed Art Museum, Louisville.
[excerpted from MoMA PS1 website: momaps1.org]