#InTheLoop | New MoMA PS1 Exhibition Draws on the Concept of Rasquachismo - QEDC

It’s amazing what an artist can do with the CMYK color model!

MoMA PS1 unveils Leslie Martinez’s first New York museum exhibition, The Fault of Formation, on Thursday, Nov. 16. (It’ll be on display at the Long Island City gem until April 2024.)

Martinez embraces “rasquachismo,” a Mexican-American art concept of making the most from the least by inventing new uses for conventional, often discarded, objects. The Texas native dyes and pleats canvases of pooled paint using a cosmic Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black palette.

The Fault of Formation features paintings that range in scale and burst with color, alongside a new series that explores the politics and poetics of the color gray as a boundless state of possibility. Some pieces make reference to the earth’s fault lines and shifting tectonic plates, dueling forces that create mountains and mirror the fractures wrought by binary politics.

The Fault of Formation will also debut new works by Martinez, who lived in New York City for 15 years before returning to the Lone Star State in 2019.

MoMA PS1 is free for New Yorkers and those under the age of 17. Out-of-towners pay $10, but seniors and students from elsewheres can attend for $5.

Born in the Rio Grande Valley near the border with Mexico in 1985, Martinez received an MFA from Yale University in 2018 after obtaining a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2008. Despite her elite education, she’s proud of her family members who have toiled as farmers, ranchers, seamstresses, and construction workers for generations. She demonstrates this affection through corporeal paintings brimming with gestural mark making.

Located in a former public school building at 22-35 Jackson Ave., MoMA PS1 presents emerging artists in an outdoor gallery, two-story display room with high ceilings, and many creatively utilized nooks and crannies. Yes, it’s affiliated with Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, and the two venues collaborate on exhibitions, education activities, and special programs.