Sites of Encounter – Art Exhibit

Rivalry Projects is thrilled to present Sites of Encounter, the gallery’s first exhibition with Philadelphia-based artist Gabriel Martinez. Including new photographic works of cruising spaces across the US and abroad, Martinez creates fragmented Queer landscapes that are imbued with anticipation and memorial. 

Of Cuban-American descent, Martinez was raised in Miami’s Little Havana in the 1970s and early 80s – a period of massive cultural shifts, radical creativity, sexual liberation, and profound loss. He utilizes experimental darkroom techniques, alongside both archival and personal images, to explore topics at the intersection of his Cuban and Queer identities. This has manifested in works that examine the AIDS crisis, Caridad del Cobre, the aesthetics of disco, Stonewall, and the legacies of migration and exile. The subject of AIDS, in particular, has remained central throughout his career, shaping an approach that resists erasure and honors the resilience of his communities.

Sites of Encounter marks a departure from Martinez’s past usage of images from national Queer archives, to utilizing his own documentation of cruising spaces. Photographing sites in Fire Island, Miami, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the locations are specific to his own experiences, while also capturing well-known Queer playgrounds that date from the 1970s to present. The final works, photographing both interior and exterior spaces, are layered distortions of the original landscapes – inverted, solarized, and bathed in light from multiple mirror-ball and laser exposures. 

Over the last 15 years Martinez has utilized complex darkroom techniques to create these effects. Once an image is identified, he translates the photograph into a large-scale fragmented digital file. The digital fragments are then converted into paper negatives and contact printed onto silver gelatin paper in an analog darkroom. Utilizing various light sources such as prisms, disco balls, or laser lights, the prints are re-exposed, processed, inverted, and then assembled into the final work. This method allows for light to adorn, distort, or fuse with a landscape so that the final works become portals to a time, a place, or a sensation.