Artist MARTÍN GUTIERREZ: MARTIN(E), on view at RYAN LEE, New York

Multi-faceted artist Martin Gutiérrez is currently showing at RYAN LEE GALLERY, New York (through Aug 16). The exhibit entitled, Martin(e), is the artist’s first solo exhibition.
Through photography, video and performance, Gutierrez showcases his “declaration of personal transformation that upends conventions of race, sexuality, gender, and class.”

(continue from previous slide) The three part series of videos entitled Martin(e) Pt. 1-3, examines insouciance and dejection through “interlaced vignettes which weave in and out of hypnotic, dream-likes scenes, with reality, revealing a melancholic quest for survival that draws equivocally from the genres of architecture, history, and popular culture.”
Gutiérrez also creates a visual wonderland of metamorphose and thought provoking scenarious through a 16 piece photo series entitled Real Dolls. In homage to the Real Doll phenomenon of life-size sex dolls, the artist translates the archetypal roles of four sex doll personas: Ebony, Luxx, Mimi, and Raquel. Casting himself,  Gutierrez describes his compositions as “orchestrated to mirror each doll’s owners desires, combining beauty with the bizarre, elegance with the extreme, and camp with the classical.”
The artist is the sole star in all of these works, while also taking on the role of cinematographer, photographer, producer, director, and stylist, as well as composing his own original music featured on the films.
“I think of my work as a documentation of transformation and performance. While gender is undoubtedly always a question in my work, I don’t see it as a boundary.” -Martin Gutiérrez
(Image Credits) Video still from Martine Part 1, 2012 – Color video with sound – 4 min. 46 sec

Real Doll, Luxx 2, 2013 – Archival inkjet print

Real Doll, Ebony 1, 2013 – Archival inkjet print

Real Doll, Raquel 4, 2013 – Archival inkjet print

Real Doll, Raquel 4, 2013 – Archival inkjet print

Video still from Martine Part 3, 2012 Color video with sound – 5 min. 13 sec
MARTN GUTIERREZ: MARTIN(E), on view at RYAN LEE, July 11 — August 16, 2013