Martine Gutierrez
ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS
May 18 – June 30, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday, May 18, 2023, 6:00-8:00 pm

Still a patriarchal language, a determinative frame. Still a divisional boundary of womanhood, a categorization of the icon, a spiritual reality in mass production. The same face of currency made over and over again. What is an icon, a cult image? Rather, what is an image? What brings a symbol to power? Culture is history’s political influence, a pendulum of domination. What is power without resistance? The historical moment, and the figure that stands in opposition. Icon as fact, a perceived understanding of truth in the world, teaching us how to see. Image as instruction; see, when an aspiration finds meaning it exceeds its boundaries, it becomes momentous. Larger than life or death, but rather the cycle between lives. Not a vision, but the place we are at now, the inevitable new, the next civilization we are going to become. In refusal of deception, an encounter with unobfuscated femininity is revealed. If the icon shows humanity’s spiritual ideal, it is the anti-icon who refuses the delusion of man, his inflated self-conception. For the icon makes real the image, anti-icon must break through to reveal reality. What is a revelation? A proclamation of clarity, a veneer stripped away, a shattering. It feels like the world is ending, because it did; it has before, and it will again end. What is the world? In the progress of nihilism, creation becomes resistance; a new image of what the world was all along.
– Martine Gutierrez

RYAN LEE is pleased to present ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, a daring new body of work by artist Martine Gutierrez. The series continues her exploration of identity across the cultural landscapes of gender, race and celebrity. In 17 new works, Gutierrez has transformed herself into a multitude of idols. Costumed by the barest of essentials, Gutierrez’s figure is the catalyst, reflecting dystopian futurism upon the symbols of our past. Through each metamorphosis, Gutierrez re-envisions a diverse canon of radical heroines who have achieved legendary cultural influence over thousands of years in both art history and pop culture.

The project’s cult following began in 2021 when it was commissioned by the Public Art Fund, exhibited on bus shelters normally used for advertising. Only 10 images from the original series were chosen to circulate.  In response to societal censors, Gutierrez had the nude forms veiled thus further interrogating the public restrictions placed on the female body in the United States. The larger-than-life portraits were encountered by pedestrians on their daily commutes, reproduced in 300 locations throughout New York, Chicago, and Boston. 

This summer, Gutierrez will reveal ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS in three distinct selections set to preview across three venues: RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; and Josh Lilley, London. The three-gallery exhibition will be accompanied by a new artist book, published by RYAN LEE, entitled APOKALYPSIS. The full collection of 17 portraits will be presented in its entirety for the first time in a traveling museum show, organized by Polygon Gallery, Vancouver slated for 2024.

Gutierrez is the sole performer in the series, portraying all 17 groundbreaking figures: Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of love, desire and beauty, identified by the Romans as ‘Venus’; Ardhanarishvara, composite male-female figure of the Hindu god Shiva together with his consort Parvati; Atargatis, Syrian mother goddess of fertility and the moon; Cleopatra, Egyptian ruler famed for her influence on Roman politics; Queen Elizabeth I, England’s second female monarch when the country asserted itself as a major power in politics, commerce and the arts in the 16th century; Gabriel, angel in the Abrahamic religions believed by many to be able to take on any physical form; Helen of Troy, Greek beauty seen as the cause of the Trojan war; Joan of Arc, sainted heroine of France, revered as a holy person for her faithfulness and bravery in battle, burned at the stake by the church; Judith The Slayer, courageous biblical widow who used her charm to save her people from an Assyrian general; Lady Godiva, bold noblewoman from the Medieval period who fought for justice for everyday people; Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mesoamerican Catholic title of Mary, who appeared to the Indigenous man Juan Diego and imprinted herself on his cloak as proof of her visitation; Mary Magdalene, ‘Magdalene’ means tower, as she is an early tower of the Christian faith, cited in the four canonical gospels as a follower and companion of Jesus Christ, a witness to his crucifixion and resurrection; The Virgin Mary, a young Jewish virgin from Nazareth, chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit; La Madonna, Italian for ‘Lady, Virgin Mary’, central figure of Christianity, celebrated as the ‘Virgin Queen’ in processions of Semana Santa, throughout Spain and Latin America; Hua Mulan, famed warrior of Chinese folklore who disguised herself as a man to fight in battle; Sacagawea, Shoshone interpreter and guide of the expedition to discover routes through pre-colonial America, journaled by Lewis and Clark; Queen of Sheba, Ethiopian queen, known for her wit, power and wealth, her romance with King Solomon is documented in the Kebra Nagast.

Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989 Berkeley, CA) is a transdisciplinary artist, performing, writing, composing and directing elaborate narrative scenes to subvert pop-cultural tropes in the exploration of identity—both personally and collectively intersectional to race, gender, class and nationality. Her amass of media—ranging from billboards to episodic films, music videos and renowned magazine, Indigenous Woman—produce the very conduits of advertising that sell the identities she disassembles. Challenging binaries through the blurring of their borders, Gutierrez insists that gender, like all things, is entangled—and argues against the linear framework of oppositional thinking. These complicated intersections are innate to Gutierrez’s own multicultural upbringing. Her malleable, ever-evolving self-image catalogs the confluence of seemingly disparate modes, conveying limitless potential for reinvention and reinterpretation.

Gutierrez received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. She is also a published musician and has produced several commercial videos. Gutierrez lives and works in New York, NY.

Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2022); Philbrook Museum of Art, OK (2022); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2022); Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, IL (2021); Rockwell Museum, NY (2020); Australian Centre for Photography, Australia (2020); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX (2019); and CAM Raleigh, NC (2016), among others. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Eretz Israel Museum, Israel (2022); Vincent Price Art Museum, CA (2022); Museum of Sex, NY (2021); Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico (2021); OÖ Kulturquartier, Austria (2021); POLYGON Gallery, Canada (2021); Huis Marseille Museum voor Fotografie, The Netherlands (2021); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2021); McNay Art Museum, TX (2021); Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN (2021); Wadsworth  Atheneum  Museum  of Art, CT (2019); New Museum, NY (2018); and Museum  of  Contemporary Art, GA (2017), among others. Her work has been acquired by the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA; Huis Marseille Museum voor Fotografie, The Netherlands; McNay Art Museum, TX; Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; Rockwell Museum, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, among others. 

About RYAN LEE
Celebrating emerging and established artists and estates, RYAN LEE takes a multi-generational approach to its programming, presenting innovative and scholarly exhibitions across all spectrums of art practices, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, and performance. The gallery takes chances on a wide variety of boundary-pushing artists; their work consistently transcends political, cultural, material, or technical boundaries. In addition, RYAN LEE has, throughout its history, demonstrated its long-standing interest and dedication to feminist, Black and Asian American, as well as queer narratives in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Founded in 2013 by Mary Ryan and Jeffrey Lee, the gallery is led by partners of different generations and backgrounds with over six decades of combined experiences informing its unique approach.