Through materiality, a structure can express its values and personality. CEO and Founder of Nippon Hasha group of companies, Ryan Cruz, acknowledges that each of his brands have a distinct personality in which he wishes to express in the dining experience. Restaurants such as Kazunori, Mendokoro, Yushoken and Marudori each have a level of distinction […]
Pow Martinez Exposes the Dark Side of Wealth and Social Media
Martinez's latest exhibit at Silverlens Manila critiques the superficiality of social media culture.
Pow Martinez’s self-titled exhibit in Silverlens Manila features recent works from the artist in his distinctively dreamlike style. The new exhibit, which opened on July 25, depicts the lives of wealthy people as seen on social media.
Stylistically, Martinez’s work here bends shapes and perspectives in interesting ways, creating caricatures of people in mockery of their cultural shallowness. The works reveal the ugliness in beauty—as if to suggest that no aesthetic filter can mask the emptiness of the soul.
“The worlds he depicts are derived from the digital landscape we often find ourselves immersed in, his inspirations being movie tropes, pop culture moments, and the broader expanse of the online space,” the exhibit write-up said. “Martinez presents varying sizes of cartoonish paintings set in these eclectic worlds featuring a cast of recurring characters including cowboys, monsters, and soldiers.”
Vanity of Social Media
Some of the paintings in this collection showcase different social media tropes performed by rich people online. There’s “morality police,” which harkens back to those publicly-denounced pictures of rich people posing next to wild animals they killed. “inner critic” also seems to call back how influencers get showy with their luxury items.
Of course, Martinez puts kinks in the depictions. For one, almost all the characters have an ugly tan and blonde hair reminiscent of Donald Trump. For another, the works just remove any sense of luxury that people could be jealous about.
“wiggle room” portrays two people inside of a large jeep, but there’s no shine or filter to make the vehicle or its passengers look untouchable. Instead, they look so cartoony and detached from reality that it might as well be a cheap animated Barbie knockoff.
Overt political commentary exists within pieces like “mental door” or “battle cry.” The former shows an angry old man stagnantly watching television, while the latter shows a soldier giving marching orders while in a tank. “mental door,” in particular, appears to comment on how our own perspectives on things are skewed by the media we consume on a day-to-day basis.
Creating Dreamlike Cultures from Digital Spaces
An interesting thing about some of the paintings here is their sizes: some of these paintings are around the same size as a phone screen to really put you in the headspace of social media. It’s a neat aesthetic trick, but it also shows the skill of Martinez that each of the smaller 8×8 or 8×12 paintings contain the same amount of details as the larger works.
“strange appearance,” for example, layers multiple discordant images one after the other. It contains the pyramids in the background, and a person holding a snake, and two people enjoying the beach. That painting piles on the cliches, and mirrors a bit the way our attention shifts when using social media.
Martinez’s approach for the exhibit’s commentary on society is to show how untethered from reality it is. For its users, social media is mythmaking and the creation of heroic narratives for themselves. The grotesqueness of the figures detaches us from them personally, but the situations they’re in reminds us that “normal” in social media isn’t necessarily “normal” in real life.
“boss fight,” one of the larger paintings made for the exhibit, shows how un-normal social media can be. The image of a man riding a horse killing a snake reminds people of politically-charged art which depict political figures in a heroic light. It’s the “us versus them,” black and white mentality, one that social media perpetuates to all its viewers.
Pow Martinez shows the painter’s comical depictions of society has not lost its edge. In fact, the images will likely get more and more topical as people continue to recede towards the online space. Nothing can apparently separate us more from our humanity, and it shows us the ugliness we participate in when we log in.
Related reading: Silhouettes and a silvery glow welcome visitors to the new Silverlens
Wallpaper is making a stylish return to interior design, but not in the ways you might expect. Gone are the days of muted florals and predictable damask prints. Today’s wallpaper trends are all about being bold, quirky, and unconventional. To get a deeper understanding of these emerging styles, we turned to renowned interior decorator Ram […]
August, also known as the Buwan ng Wika in the Philippines, demonstrated the uniqueness of the Filipino art scene in its continued evolution. BluPrint covered some of these August art exhibits, from discussion of the Chinese diaspora to profound explorations of generative AI. With the abundance of art out there, we at BluPrint wanted to […]
Stepping into the home of fashion designer Michael Leyva feels like entering a space where dreams, memories, and passions come to life. Built in 2017, the house is a tribute to family, a reflection of Leyva’s creative mind, and a canvas that showcases his love for art and design. For Michael, this home holds deep […]
“Sustainability is my passion and it’s tied to my design practice,” architect Liza Morales says. “When I went to school in Columbia in New York, I knew from day one I was going to move back to the Philippines. My heart was set on doing something sustainable. Fifteen to 20 years ago, sustainability was unheard […]
Sustainable design takes many forms—one of the most compelling being biophilic design. This approach intends to close the divide between humans and nature, particularly in increasingly urbanized environments. And it’s even more inspiring when it’s embodied through another facet of sustainability, which is adaptive reuse. The Stone House, as the perfect realization of these design […]
Download this month's BLUPRINT magazine digital copy from:
Subscribe via [email protected]