Memory of the Future: Gabriel Martinez and Jeanine Oleson

Runs / September 8 – October 29th, 2023

Reception / Friday, September 8, 6-10 PM

Hours: Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM

Grizzly Grizzly presents Memory of the Future, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Gabriel Martinez and Jeanine Oleson. Seen together, Oleson’s whimsical sculptures and Martinez’ experimental photographic works confront seismic global and cultural challenges through a lens that both celebrates and explores emotional connections to place, loss, and the complexities of representing inner experiences.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gabriel Martinez photographed Club Philly, a local Queer institution established in 1974. Martinez splices a resulting image to create a large tiled photographic work that reimagines the club’s playroom as a fragmented space filled with potential and anticipation. He also exhibits Queer Eclipse, an ongoing project that delves into LGBTQ+ history, particularly the summer of 1981. The silver gelatin prints were sourced during a research trip to Queer archives in LA and San Francisco in March 2020. To make the work, Martinez temporarily turns the darkroom into a dancefloor, integrating multi-exposed mirror-ball photograms, solarization, contact printing via paper negatives, and laser lights. Within these musings, Martinez metaphorically connects the past and present and transports his research into the realm of a hopeful Queer future bound to the past.

In Jeanine Oleson’s research she explores caves as representations of pre-/post-/un-conscious spaces of knowledge and meaning. Oleson’s new work, Cave-machine (again, with feeling), delves into vision as a theatrical space. A subtle nod to Duchamp’s enigmatic Étant donnés that instead protects it’s interior, her sculpture, a proto-theater-flat composed of a cave with a bricked-over opening and peephole, fronts a camera-like form that projects out images of wave forms through an unconventional hand-blown lens. Can You Feel It? entails a small tactile transducer that turns a shell into a speaker playing Mr. Fingers’ legendary, soulful house track of the same name. Oleson’s fascination lies in seeing the materials that evoke reactions and feelings, such as the raw, oversized copper wires moving information to the otherwise inert shell. This collision between material, bodies and the senses invites listeners into the queerest of experiences.

Artist Bios

Gabriel Martinez is a Philly-based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on LGBTQ+ culture and history. His work explores themes of loss, celebration, memorial, sexuality, and cultural identity. He researches the late 70s and early 80s milieu, drawing inspiration from Queer archives, the AIDS pandemic, disco aesthetics, and more. Born in Miami, Florida, Martinez received his MFA from Tyler and BFA from the University of Florida, both in photography. He is the recipient of prestigious awards, including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, and the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation grant. Martinez has showcased his work nationally and participated in various artist residencies, including at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Yaddo, and MASS MoCA.

Jeanine Oleson is an interdisciplinary artist known for her complex and humorous creations in images, materiality, and language. Her work examines material effects of power through a queer and feminist lens. Oleson holds degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rutgers University. She has exhibited and performed globally, with appearances at The Kitchen, Cubitt Gallery, Hammer Museum, SculptureCenter, and more. Oleson has received recognition through grants such as the Rome Prize, Creative Capital Artist Grant and the Franklin Furnace Fellowship. She is also a lead collaborator on Photo Requests from Solitary, a project supporting individuals in solitary confinement through images and advocacy in US prisons including a long-term installation at Eastern State Penitentiary.