Self Portrait

Daniel Joseph Martínez

True to form for Daniel Joseph Martínez, the radical Chicano artist who personifies the role of the artist as agent provocateur, these images cause an uproar. Their technical perfection is obscene as they emerged from the factory of illusion of the film industry, so-called “special effects.” These Nietzschean/Artaudian self-portraits express an inclination for “soft, sweet madness” in their raw perfectionism. With the violent marks of the serrated knife or scalpel on his skin, he alludes to a meditation on the post-human utopia we have inherited from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. As is always the case in Martínez’s work, we have to suspect a hidden agenda: to persevere in an art that assumes the risk of being unforgettable and misunderstood.