Talk
The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George
Overview
The first Un-Private Collection conversation of 2024 features Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) exhibition artists Sayre Gomez and Patrick Martinez, moderated by noted author and native Angelino Lynell George. Gomez and Martinez’s paintings are emblematic of a new generation of artists using the visual language of Los Angeles as inspiration for their creative practice. Martinez’s paintings incorporate architectural elements to indicate and preserve identity and culture for the Latinx community as the landscape of the city changes. Gomez’s artworks portray the passage of time and urban decay that looms over the city through faded signage, as well as the neglected and vacant buildings he encounters. The artists and George will discuss Los Angeles as a creative landscape and how their artworks are shaped by it. Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist, and author, whose 2020 book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler was a finalist for a Hugo Award.
This program is part of the Lunder Institute@ initiative and is co-presented by the Lunder Institute for American Art, a part of the Colby Museum of Art. Lunder Institute@ invites institutions to be in conversation with one another and challenges them to look critically at American art, its history, its future, and its evolution.
ASL interpreters provided by Pro Bono ASL
know before you go
Tickets include same-day access to the Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) and the third floor galleries. Access to Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013) is not included and must be booked separately here.
For information on our current health and safety policies, visit Know Before You Go & FAQ. Visitor policies are subject to change.
Biographies
Sayre Gomez
Sayre Gomez (b. 1982, Chicago, IL) works across mediums, including painting, sculpture, and video, to address themes of perception and representation. His works often deploy a range of painting techniques drawn omnivorously from Hollywood set painting, commercial sign painting, automotive airbrushing, and other traditions. The city of Los Angeles serves as a frequent setting and subject, given homage through references to roadside signage, car culture, fantastical sunsets, and other aspects of Angeleno visual culture. Recurring metaphors such as windows, doors, gates, and and walls are often used in Gomez’s work as part of an investigation into the role of context in the distribution and legibility of images in the 21st century. Gomez holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles among others. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Photo: Jason Roberts Dobrin
Patrick Martinez
Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, and at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.
Lynell George
Lynell George is an award-winning L.A.-based journalist, essayist, and author. Her work explores social issues and human behavior, as well as urban histories, visual art, music and literature. A former staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, her pieces have appeared in Sierra, Alta: A Journal of Alta California, The New York Times, Oxford American, and High Country News, among many other publications. She is the author of three books of nonfiction: No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels, After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, and A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, which was a 2021 Hugo Award Finalist.
Photo: Noé Montes.
About the Lunder Institute for American Art
A collaborative initiative of the Colby College Museum of Art, located in central Maine, the Lunder Institute for American Art supports innovative research and creative production that expands the boundaries of American art.
The Lunder Institute invites visiting artists, scholars, and museum professionals to engage across disciplines with Colby faculty and students, the College’s network of institutional partners, leading experts, and other creative collaborators. Through fellowships, workshops, symposia, and incubator grants, the Lunder Institute amplifies marginalized voices, challenges convention, and provides a platform for generative dialogue through art and scholarship.
About The Un-Private Collection
The Un-Private Collection is an ongoing series of public programs The Broad began in September 2013. The series introduces audiences to the museum’s 2,000-work contemporary art collection by showcasing stories behind the collection, the collectors and the artists. Since launching the program, The Broad has brought together a variety of artists whose works are in the Broad collection in conversation with cultural leaders, including Mark Bradford with Katy Siegel, Shirin Neshat with Christy MacLear, Jeff Koons with John Waters, Takashi Murakami with Pico Iyer, Eric Fischl with Steve Martin, John Currin with James Cuno, Kara Walker with Ava DuVernay and architect Elizabeth Diller with Eli Broad, Joanne Heyler and Paul Goldberger. Talks have been held at venues throughout Los Angeles, making the programming available to audiences across the city. Conversations are live-streamed and full videos of past talks are available online. The Un-Private Collection series is part of the Broad collection’s 30-year mission to make contemporary art accessible to the widest possible audience.
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