Gabriel Martinez
Recto-Verso 1981 (#3), 2026
Inkjet image transfer on Plexiglass, mirror (Chromotone)
19 x 15.5"

Artist Statement

A single page from a gay publication circa 1981 was scanned as a transparency; both sides now digitally combined as one image. This double-sided image was transferred directly onto plexiglass using an injet transferr process. A miror behind the inkjet-transferred layer projects light through the image. The impossibility of seeing both sides of a single image at the same time is realized, revealing an unexpected intermingling of (Queer) time and space.

Artist Bio

Gabriel Martinez is a photo-based multidisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Miami, Florida. Martinez's practice is based in Philadelphia. He was a Pew Fellowship in the Arts recipient in 2001, received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in 2003, and in 2019 was awarded both an Independent Creative Production Grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and an Independence Foundation Fellowship. He has participated in several artist residency programs including: the Rosenbach Museum, the Fabric Workshop, the Fountainhead Residency, Arcadia Summer Arts Program, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Banff Centre, the Studios at MASS MoCA and the Joan Mitchell Center.

Martinez attended the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in 2003, and received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in 1991 and his BFA from the University of Florida in 1998. He has been teaching in the Photo Program for the Department of Fine Arts, PennDesign for the last 25 years. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for the Emerging Visual Artist and TILT. Gabriel Martinez has exhibited his work at various national venues including: in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Fabric Workshop & Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Bike Stop, Vox Populi, Fjord, William Way LGBT Community Center and Nexus Foundation for Today's Art; in New York at White Columns, Leslie Lohman Gay Art Museum's Prince Street Project Space, Franklin Furnace, Exit Art and Thread Waxing Space; and in Miami at Miami Art Central and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. His work is included in the Phaidon Press publication "Art & Queer Culture" (Themes and Movements Series) and is featured in En Foco's Nueva Luz issue, Vol 22.2: The Queer Issue. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fabric Workshop & Museum and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay Art.

gabrielmartinez.com