The Art World Provocateur,-Alfredo Martinez
Alfredo Martinez is a New York City-based artist who served time in the US federal prison for forging and selling Basquiat drawings to prominent collectors. He was also detained and later deported from China by local authorities.
INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST ALFREDO MARTINEZ
ARTIST ALFREDO MARTINEZ (on the right)
LES COULEURS: Where were you born?
ALFREDO MARTINEZ: I was born and raised in New York.
LC: Tell us more about your experience in China?
AM: Well, the art scene there expanded very rapidly and out of the blue. It’s like a phenomenon of seeing rain in the desert, and afterwards,- witnessing green all of the sudden. So I think Chinese government freaked out a little bit. I lived in China 2003-2009. When I came out of a prison in US, I felt like I was running for a mayor,- too much attention. I was used to being anonymous and I missed being anonymous! So when I went to China, I was anonymous once again.
LC: How did you end up getting in trouble in China?
AM: All my friends were wondering how long it will take me to get in trouble with the police. In China, I kept doing all the same things I was doing in New York, including the shows. I organized an art exhibition in an airplane hangar size building. It would take half an hour to go from one side to the other, we had around 100 artists participating.
Funny, my friends were curating a show for a foundation with only western artists participating and guess what,- nobody came to the opening. There were no Chinese artists, therefore,- no interest. Naturally all the westerners were very upset, so I found a place to re-curate the show, because I believed that the show was good,- but this time I included Chinese artists as well and it finally turned out to be a great success!
LC: How did you like living in China?
AM: Oh, I loved China! I lived in Beijing. It felt very much like New York. It was open 24h a day. There were bars open all night long, there was no last call,-bars would just stay open for as long as there were customers.
I would argue with censors a lot about art exhibitions. I would tell them,- if you sensor us,- you’ll end up costing us money, it will hurt the sales,- we are trying to get the western press. Then the penny would drop and the Chinese would say,- we don’t want to do that! I tried explaining it to them,- censor but in a subtle way, let them go to the edge, and make China look liberal too. Chinese as you know,- censor themselves.
Chinese government didn’t really have a problem with the art they were making, they had a problem with the power they were gaining. It reminded me when I was a kid. When you are a little poor kid, the main thing is how are you going to make money, what’s your hustle? When I was 13, my family moved to Pennsylvania, they didn’t want me to be hanging in the “punk scene”. What I learned in Pennsylvania is that you can buy crystals by the pound and re-sell in New York City for outrageous amounts of money. So I was basically liberated, making 300-400$ a week gave me a lot of freedom. When you have your own money, no authority can control you. So that’s the same thing that happened with Chinese artists, all of the sudden they became very powerful. It costed nothing to make art, materials and space was very cheap and they sold art for thousands of dollars. Ai Weiwei was a special case, but there were others too.
Gao brothers for example, they made a controversial toy of Chairman Mao. Every famous Chinese artist would end up venturing into other areas and businesses, like opening their own restaurants, etc.,
LC: Did u get a chance to meet Ai Weiwei ?
AM: He was trying to hire a western assistant, since Chinese ones would be scared away, so I did go meet with him. In China, the art world is kind of open, if you really want to meet someone, you can!
LC: Was there a specific incident that caused your inprisonment in China?
AM: I think they were just investigating me. They were curious who’s that guy who come to visit Ai Weiwei, because just a week later when I was in the internet cafe, drawing stuff, I got a tap on a shoulder. Five foot tall SWAT guy, dressed in black, asked me to come with him. Later on at the precinct, another officer dressed in black, wearing gold glasses and holding a gold pen, asked me to recognize several people in the photos, they were all Chinese. So I decided to crack some sarcastic jokes,- worst decision of my life. They did not appreciate my jokes… well they were not exactly torturing me, but putting me in so called stress positions until I would collapse. I was there detained for 2 weeks or so.
Some of my friends were very concerned that I was missing. One friend who found out that I was picked up from internet cafe was very connected locally and made some calls to the right people. Shortly after they brought me to a regular prison, then one Chinese guard asked me how much it would cost me to get home. I thought to myself, - I don’t even know where I am! The interesting thing is that regular police and special police don’t like each other.
After I was released I got deported, they flew me home in business class.
LC: Where does your fascination with guns come from?
AM: Me being immature… kids usually start by drawing guns, army men, later move onto drawing the naked girls, but I got stuck in that phase of guns. I could say that I have some big intellectual reason but I won’t… I do it because I like it.
LC: What themes do you pursue?
AM: Anything with technology, robots. Socially,- I am also a notorious troll online, if I see people posting about horoscopes,- it drives me crazy, I think those people should not be allowed to use electricity hahaaa!
ALFREDO MARTINEZ WITH AURA COPELAND
LC: Your favorite book?
AM: Any book by Yukio Mishima.
LC: What do you dislike about the art world?
AM: What I dislike about the art world is that it is not taken seriously by the rest of the community, but then somebody duct tapes a banana to a wall!
LC: What is your greatest indulgence in life?
AM: My greatest indulgence is playing video games.
WORK BY ALFREDO MARTINEZ
LC: If you could work within a past art movement, which would it be?
AM: It would be fun to go back in time and pull pranks with the situationists or play with the coyote with Joseph Beuys.
WORK BY ALFREDO MARTINEZ
