Juan Carlos Martínez

Fernando Pradilla Gallery presents the fourth exhibition by Spanish artist Juan Carlos Martínez (Campanario, Badajoz, 1978 - Madrid, 2023) in our space. The exhibition The Show Must Go On, curated by Javier Díaz-Guardiola, proposes a dialogue between different work processes developed by Juan Carlos throughout his intense artistic career, articulating a discourse around the limits of the gaze in shared space and the strategies and modes of image capture.

The exhibition brings together a set of photographic series from 2005 to 2021, offering an exploration of essential aspects of Martínez's work, such as the representation of the body, the notion of masculinity, the image as testimony, youth, desire, as well as his aim to record the contexts and devices with which he captured his images.

Thus, the gallery's rooms feature images from his series Secret Photography Archive, Breakers, Spermopsida Expedition, The Bystander, Physical Performance, A Way of Love, and Screen and Windows, among others; works defined by Juan Carlos's conscious action of recording the photographed event in its spatio-temporal dimension. He was interested in documenting and testifying to the performative act of capturing his images, his modus operandi, which, as he himself stated, "is based on real experience, perceived and captured live, and then transferred to a realm of subjectivation, fantasy, and fiction."

The exhibition The Show Must Go On emphasizes the portrait, which, as Juan Carlos noted in 2022, was a genre systematically adopted in his later years "as a new approach to the representation of youth, marking a turning point in the conception and meaning of the image; identities in emotional contexts, determined by the situation we were experiencing" (referring to the COVID pandemic).

And he continued explaining his most recent creative process: “The technical complexity of the image, using a medium-format camera and another tripod for the focus, with 50mm lenses, which is the most suitable for this genre, posed a challenge for me. My intention with the portrait is to study society through youth in different emotional states, associated with the context of the turbulent times brought on by the COVID crisis. A tribute, which will be forged over time, to each subject through our encounter, as a sociological study also related to the pictorial nature of heroic painting.” J.C.M.

Juan Carlos Martínez graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Seville in 2002. He obtained a specialty in Painting from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2003, and completed the International Master's Degree in Photography at EFTI in 2006. He was awarded several scholarships to support his work, including those from UNICAJA for Photography (2012), the AECID and Hablar en Arte scholarship for his participation in the project Lugares de tránsito (2010), the Photography Scholarship at the Colegio de España in Paris, awarded by the Ministry of Culture (2009), and the Mexican Government Scholarship at the prestigious Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. (2007), the 2007 Generation Grant from Obra Social Caja Madrid (2007), the Madrid Procesos Grant from the Association of Visual Artists of Madrid (AVAM) (2006), and the Antonio Gala Foundation Grant in Córdoba (2004-2005), among others.

His photographic work has been part of prominent exhibition projects such as New Ways of Experimenting with the Emotion of the Image (2022-2023) at the Sala Europa in Badajoz; La NO Comunidad (2018), presented at CentroCentro (Madrid), curated by Blanca de la Torre and Ricardo Ramón Jarne; Solo es sexo (2016) at Espacio Proyectos Fernando Pradilla (Madrid), curated by Javier Díaz-Guardiola; and Contexto Crítico (2013), curated by Rosa Olivares and Carolina García and exhibited at Tabacalera in Madrid. Botánica After Humboldt (2011), sponsored by the Beulas Foundation, the Government of Aragon, and the Huesca City Council, curated by Rosa Olivares and presented at the Huesca Art and Nature Center (CDAN); Saltar la página. 20 Años de ABC Cultural (2011), curated by Laura Revuelta for the ABC Museum in Madrid; and Huellas, restos, memoria (2010), at the Isabel Ignacio Gallery in Seville, curated by Sema D’Acosta.

Among the awards Juan Carlos Martínez has received throughout his career are First Prize in the 6th Santiago Castelo 2022 International Photography Competition (Coimbra, Portugal) for his work Physical Landscape; the Prize in the Medina Azahara Photographic Proposal Competition (Córdoba, 2016); the Second Prize in the Marqués Valle de Tena Award (Madrid, 2008); First Prize in the 9th ABC Painting and Photography Award (Madrid, 2008); Finalist in the 44th Caja Sol Visual Arts Competition (Seville, 2008); First Prize in the 8th UCM Young Visual Arts Award (Madrid, 2006); the INJUVE Audiovisual Award (Madrid, 2005); the Acquisition Award in the 10th UNICAJA Visual Arts Competition (Málaga, 2005); among others. Institutional collections in Spain feature works by Juan Carlos Martínez, such as those of ABC, Obra Social Caja Madrid, the Regional Government of Extremadura, Obra Social de UNICAJA, the Andalusian Youth Institute, the Rafael Botí Foundation of Córdoba, the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation of Mallorca, the Cajasol Foundation, the Utrera Contemporary Art Collection (Seville), the Complutense University of Madrid Foundation, the Antonio Gala Foundation, the EXPLUM Contemporary Art Collection, the Doña Mencía Contemporary Art Collection (Córdoba), the University of Fine Arts of Seville, and the University of Granada Contemporary Art Collection.