The Tucson Museum of Art presents Look What You Created, the first solo museum exhibition in the American Southwest by Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez.
Patrick Martinez: Look What You Created
November 4, 2021–April 24, 2022
Tucson Museum of Art
The Tucson Museum of Art presents Look What You Created, the first solo museum exhibition in the American Southwest by Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez.
The events that transpired in 2020 changed the world forever. The United States grappled with the pandemic, presidential election, tragic events, and systemic injustices faced by people of color to unveil a deeply divided nation. Through social media, protests, marches, and calls for accountability and equity, a new urgency arose, and artists across the United States responded with a profound reaction and message.
In Look What You Created, Martinez explores personal, civic, and cultural loss in communities of color, discrimination, displacement, and demands accountability and transparency. Look What You Created, both the title and the work in the exhibition, ambiguously addresses past challenges of fixed power systems and the present examples of democracy in action.
Martinez’s art takes on various forms in a variety of media, including mixed-media painting, neon signs, and cake paintings. Expanding his practice over the last year, Martinez explores socially engaged and accessible forms of work such as mass-produced lawn signs, a charitable art initiative folder project, and clothing. Captivating and provocative, Look What You Created exemplifies Martinez’s ability to invoke conversations about equity, empathy, humanity, and connection.
While alluding to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and former Los Angeles Times senior staff photographer and photo editor Kirk D. McKoy’s photograph that features the phrase “Look what you created,” Martinez’s work reveals the startling analogies between such imagery and events and recent nationwide protests and demonstrations. “The messages that were in the air then and are echoed now have influenced the exhibition and title of the show,” says Martinez.
In Look What You Created, the “past is the present” with works that reverberate a sense of urgency, immediacy, and, ultimately, an ongoing demand for action.
sponsored by
As an institution built upon the original territories of the O’odham, the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block acknowledges the Indigenous Sonoran Desert communities past and present who have stewarded this region throughout generations. TMA connects art to life through meaningful and engaging experiences that inspire discovery, spark creativity, and promote cultural understanding. Founded in 1924, TMA encompasses an entire city block in historic downtown Tucson. TMA is committed to developing quality exhibitions, expanding, diversifying its collection, and presenting relevant and innovative programs while broadening public access to the arts.
