Portraiture is all about approximation-even what is being rendered is not the face.

In the works of Pow Martinez, it is the face all right, and yet, instead of achieving recognizable form, it disintegrates. The idiom of “losing one’s face” achieve a visual equivalent in his forms.

More than anything else, we are aware of the materiality of the artwork-the squiggles and drips of color, the expressive quality of oil. This prevents us from forging an immediate identification with the portrait and by extension, the humanity, on hand. And yet, one can’t deny the vibrant life implicit in the strokes-the energy that begins disconcertingly but jumps into a resonant intensity.

Menacing though they may be, the faces finally stare at us through palpable art. They look and feel invented. We admire the sweep of the shimmering strokes. And this is where we forge the connections: with the need to create to invent, with the imperative to subvert the real.