Karlo Martinez´s work is a combination of gay porn, architecture, and consumerism, using collage as the main medium. The images and clippings come from all kinds of publications, fashion magazines, interior design, and porn video stills.
“The need to express myself arises from my personal experiences as a homosexual man. Growing up in Mexico and studying at a Catholic school, the subject of sex and sexuality went hand in hand with guilt and remorse. When I moved to Australia to study architecture and began to experiment with my homosexuality with more freedom, the need arose to liberate and express that sexual energy that I kept so repressed.”
“During this time, I also experimented briefly with gay porn, I filmed some scenes here in Australia for a local gay porn studio, and I had offers to audition and film with some studios in the United States and Europe, but I decided that that career was not for me. I realised, too, that there is still a lot of taboo and shame around pornography and porn actors, especially gay porn.”
“I suppose that, in a way, my collage work is a reflection of all these personal experiences mentioned and at the same time it is my way of glorifying, appreciating, and elevating porn and its actors to an artistic level, as well as “normalising” gay sex. We live in a society in which sex sells, sex (heterosexual for the most part) is everywhere in the media, and most of us consume porn. Why should we have an attitude of shame and guilt over these issues? Why is sex work and the sex and porn industry still so stigmatised?”
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