SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Martín Gutierrez’s music videos, four of which are shown at the McNay Art Museum, explore self-transformation and the intersection of fantasy and reality. His videos subvert typical gender tropes, thereby forcing viewers to come to their own conclusions. In Clubbing, a video from Gutierrez’s undergraduate years, the artist plays multiple characters, both male and female, in a bid to supplant ideas of traditional identity. Trio appears to display Gutierrez’s form inserted in a bleak desert landscape. The artist manipulates images of his figure—in triplicate—in order to arouse in the viewer questions of identity and reality.

Both Blame the Rain and If feature the character Martine, Gutierrez’s singer persona. These works examine the status of celebrity, media, and subculture through videos that are written, sung, and produced by Gutierrez alone. The artist describes these music videos as explorations on the theme of pop singer “Lana del Rey goes to the Caribbean and is still sad.”

Martín Gutierrez was born in 1989 in Berkeley, California, to an American mother and Guatemalan father, and as an adolescent moved to rural Vermont. The artist received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. Gutierrez is based in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including the Daily Beast, New York Times, New York Magazine, and Paper Magazine.