Oil and spray on canvas
33"x66"
The most vivid, lapidary rendering in this work occurs in the lower half of this two-tier construction—the trendy New Balance athletic shoes on the voluptuous female model painter Mauro C. Martinez has employed. Youth-based imperialism, which dominates Western society, has a devotion to brands almost as great as the middle class devotion to Walmart. How the painting develops to the viewer is as interesting as it is ambiguous, however.
As one ascends the picture plane, the brushwork becomes increasingly inchoate and undefined—saving its last definite strokes for the depiction of the woman’s heavy, hanging, immensely erotic breasts. By the time one reaches her face—the throne of being—there is only dissociation remaining in the painting’s entire top half. Martinez’s problematic union of sex and commodity would seem to imply that she is the problem the painting is trying so hard to solve. This may be why the graphical arrow at top left points directly at her.
