Requiem for a Dream

A solo exhibition by Alfredo Martinez, considered a genealogy of neo-expressionism due to the coloured radiograph-like paintings and splattered ink, the images of guns that dominated the inside of the artist, and the various behaviours to cultivate his own mythology.

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MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY is pleased to present Alfredo Martinez’s solo exhibition “Requiem for a Dream”. Martinez is an artist from New York City who likes to disassemble guns and observe how they work in order to fire them, which is the subject of his paintings. His career was full of scandal, disorder and madness: in the 1990s, he shot blanks at an art dealer with a handmade gun at a New York art fair, and was imprisoned in China for searching the internet for weapons information. Particularly in 2002, Martinez made a name for himself in the art industry when he was sentenced to 27 months in prison for 17 Jean-Michel Basquiat forgeries and certificates of authenticity and selling them to an art collector. Whilst in prison, he went on a 55-day hunger strike as the guards refused to allow him to create, and also drew his work on books and postcards with coffee grounds, pens and pencils, which he took out in secret to exhibit and sell at a gallery in Manhattan. In 2019, he had his first exhibition in Japan at MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY, but died in 2023 at the age of 56 due to worsening diabetes and an infection in his right foot.

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Martinez’s gun paintings reflect a period of unremitting war, riots and shootings, one of which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In the 1980s, Martinez was part of the New York art scene at the same time as Basquiat. With the coloured radiograph-like paintings and splattered ink, the images of guns that dominated the inside of the artist, and his various behaviours in cultivating his own mythology, Martinez can be regarded as a genealogy of *neo-expressionism. His desperate expression is a provocative statement on contemporary society, which also encompasses sharp insights into the darkness that infests the art industry, such as the deception of authenticity and money laundering. It would be no exaggeration to say that Martinez’s creation, words, deeds and life itself were artistic performances. The exhibition will feature nine paintings made in 2018 and 2019 as a memorial to Martinez.

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*The new figurative painting trend that emerged at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s. In reaction to the minimalist, conceptual art that ruled the 1970s, a style in which figures, historical and mythological subjects are depicted with rough brushstrokes, flourished worldwide, especially amongst young artists.