Enero 2010 - Año 4 No. 2
Fifteen years after his indelible first appearance in the Whitney Biennial in 1993, Daniel Joseph Martinez continues to create work that unapologetically probes uncomfortable issues of personal and collective identity, seeking out threadbare spots in the fabric of conventional wisdom. A strategic provocateur with a keen intelligence and a wicked sense of humor, Martinez deploys the full range of available media in his practice, having used at various times (and in various combinations) text, image, sculpture, video, and performance to construct his uniquely tough-minded brand of aesthetic inquiry.
The artists works over the last few years vividly demonstrate both his methods and fascinations Martinez*s ongoing project featuring his own body as a site of contention and disturbance brings questions about appearance and reality into strikingly personal focus Complicity is also a watchword for his newest work, Divine Violence, 2007 first shown at The Project in New York. The work takes its name from Walter Benjamins coinage for a form of violence that functions as pure means, with knowable ends. The installation of 125 panels, painted in automotive goldflake and each bearing the name of an organization around the world attempting to affect politics through violent means, is part of a larger ongoing project whose open-ended mix of theory, politics, and research is representative of Martinezs entire practice. By JeffreyKastner.Taken from 2008 Whitney Biennial.
